The Vampires of Soldiers Cove (4 page)

We stood for a long moment and looked at each other. “Well, thanks for a wonderful evening,” I said.
He laughed at my sarcasm.

“You know it actually went a lot better than I thought it would.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I still have my head.”

Gavin gave another small grin and then shifted into a decidedly serious tone
. “I know you have a lot of questions, and I promise I’ll answer them all.”

“You better come in and sit down then because otherwise we’ll be standing out here for the rest of the night.”

I let us in as fast as I could and finally began to relax a little as we sat on the couch. Gizzy came and sat between us. The place was colder than I normally kept it since I didn’t seem to have a need for heat now but Gizzy wasn’t impressed. Gavin put his hand out and scratched the orange tabby behind the ears.

“Hello pretty girl.”
The cat purred and he seemed to be almost purring back. She couldn’t seem to get close enough to him.

“Why don’t you let her outside once the weather warms up?” he asked.

“She’s an indoor cat. Wait, how did he know my cat didn’t go outside?”

“She wants to hunt.
You want a big juicy mouse for a snack don’t you? Or maybe a nice fat squirrel huh? Yum yum.”

“Is she telling you this?”

“Sort of. Sometimes animals show me images of what they want, and likewise I can communicate visual images to them as well.”

“You are telling me you talk to animals?”

“Well, talk no, they don’t have language.  But yes I guess is the answer.”

“Well I don’t know why that should surprise me after the things I’ve seen over the last few days.
Tell her if she promises not to get hit by a car or eaten by a coyote it’s a deal.”

Gavin scratched her some more.
“She agrees,” he said smiling at the cat, and with that she crawled up into his lap and fell asleep.

“So,” I began, “you are going to teach me how to fight?”

“Yes.”

“And to control my voices?”

“Yes, but Rachel you have to understand, these things take years to learn. Most of us learn the things I am going to try and teach you over decades and maybe even centuries. We probably have a couple of weeks at best.”

Feeling the familiar involuntary reaction of my teeth sharply bearing down on my bottom lip I said,
“I don’t think I’ll be of any help.”

“You will...you have to be.
Otherwise a lot of innocent people are going to die. Humans, vampires, it’s going to be a massacre. We need you not so much to fight, although it never hurts to have another soldier, we need you to see Samuel, maybe read his mind and warn us so we can be ready. We don’t know when he’s coming or what he’s going to do. We need to know if he’s coming alone or if he has created others.”

Sitting here with Gavin I felt safe, but I knew that pretty soon that would not be the case.
Slumping forward I lowered my head in my hands.  Gavin made it sound like I was directly responsible for whether we won or lost this battle.

“Don’t worry,” he said reading my expression.
“I’m going to be with you every step of the way. We will do this together and we’ll win.”

“I wish the others had th
e confidence in me that you do.  I get the impression I was a surprise.”

“Don’t worry about James,” Gavin snorted.
“He has a big mouth and no brains.”

“You know him?”

“He’s my brother.”  I remembered the way Gavin had bared his fangs at James. He had threatened his own flesh and blood. But I had met all of the MacDonald kids and Gavin wasn’t one of them.

“How can he be your brother? I know his family.”

“You haven’t met us all.” He smiled. “There are way more than the fifteen that you know.”

“Were you born a vampire?”

“No you can’t be born a vampire, but you can be born to vampire parents. Both of my parents are vampires. My mother was changed during her child bearing years so she can go on having children forever if she wants.”

I thought about Gavin’s mother.
She did always seem quite youthful and was always getting compliments about how good she looked ‘for her age’.

“I’m confused. If you can’t be born a vampire why are you and your brother vampires?”

“My brother chose to be. Some are given the choice when they come of age.”

“What if you refuse?”

“That particular memory can be wiped from a human’s mind and you go back to not knowing. Ignorance is bliss.”

I looked at Gavin who was obviously much older when he had been changed
, perhaps late twenties. “How did your change happen?”

“I got into a fight with a chainsaw.
Luckily, or unluckily, depending on how you look at it, Dad had come with me that day. I would have died. He turned me to save my life. He got a stern lecture from Angus though.”

“Why?”

“You’re not supposed to do that. You never interfere with a human’s natural death unless they are sick and suffering and you are doing them a kindness. But like I said before, that has to be approved.”  This was easily the most surreal conversation I had ever had, and considering the things I’d seen over the last few days that was really saying something.

“When James said what he did about me being Acadian what did he mean?”

“Well let’s just say what you learned in junior high history has been tweaked ever so slightly. You remember the Acadian expulsion from Nova Scotia in 1755?”

“Yes,” I lied not wanting to admit my lack of understanding.  History class had not been an easy one to sit through before the voices began, let alone after.

“Yeah, well it wasn’t because they wouldn’t sign an unconditional oath of allegiance to Brittan.”

“What did they do?” I asked not sure if I actually wanted to know the truth.

“It’s what they wouldn’t do. Some had been turned but they refused to feed. They tried to live on animal blood, but too much of that is deadly to us, even a few mouthfuls can make you sick.  They refused to feed off humans. They seemed to have a harder time in adjusting from human morals to vampire morals. They were dying off because they could not live with themselves when they followed their instincts. The leaders at the time took it as an insult that they wouldn’t embrace this way of life, this gift of immortality that they had been given, and so their villages were burned and they were sent into exile by the purists. James, as you can probably tell, is a purist.”

“Wow,” was all I could come up with.
Even though the group I was now part of viewed them as traitors I had never been more proud of my roots.

“Crazy huh?”

“To say the least,” I said.

“Yes, but some of you came back obviously.
The children did not know or had forgotten. The ones who hadn’t turned.”  Gavin looked out the window and noticed the bluish hue of the morning beginning to creep across the sky.  “I need to get back to the sanctuary and get things ready for you.”

“I’m not sure I want to go back to that place.
I didn’t exactly feel welcome.”

“Don’t worry,” he smiled.
“Nobody wants to risk what Angus will do to them if they touch you, and besides a lot of them won’t be there. Only a few of us are living at the Sanctuary right now.” That must be why I had never laid eyes on him. He didn’t live out in the open.

“Are you still feeling ok?” he asked.

“What do you mean? Why do you keep asking me that?”

“Let me put it this way, do you feel like killing someone and draining their blood?”

“Umm...can’t say I do.”

“Good,” he said.
“But you will have to feed soon. You’re young and so you’ll need good blood. We’ll need to get you fed in the next couple of days.”

I don’t know if it was the French Acadian in me or something else but the way he said that made me want to throw up and run away screaming.
I couldn’t imagine drinking someone’s blood. He gently moved Gizzy from his lap to the couch without disturbing the slumbering cat.

“I’ll come for you tomorrow after dark.
I want you to sleep today even though you slept yesterday. It might feel impossible but if you just concentrate you can will it to happen.”

“If you say so,” I said again.
That idea seemed ridiculous.  I opened the door and let him out; as I did he turned and winked. It was the return of the cocky guy I had not seen all night. 

“Goodnight beautiful,” he said.
And with that he was gone again.             

Chapter Six

Gavin had been right. About five minutes after I put my head on the pillow and told myself to go to sleep I was out. My dreams were vivid now and sometimes it was hard to tell where dreams ended and reality began.  In my dream I began to hear the male voice that had been plaguing me for the last number of years. It was so loud I was sure that when I opened my eyes he would be standing over my bed screaming obscenities at me.

Pulling
the blanket up over my head I covered my ears. For a moment I wondered if the last few days of blissful vampire silence had all been a dream or a hallucination of its own…and then I felt it.  A burning, that began in my throat and stomach was soon radiating with fury all over my body. Every inch of me felt like it was on fire.  Opening my eyes I realized the darkness had come once again. The entire day had passed as I slept and now I woke up hearing voices, and sure I was being pulled back under into the violent cyclone of mental illness. I didn’t know what to do.

I began to panic.
Bleary eyed I raced down the hallway to the kitchen. I had not been taking my medication for the past few days but I remembered the effect the anti-psychotic drug would sometimes have on me, lulling me to sleep and giving me escape from the voices temporarily. Downing a handful of the tranquilizers I curled up into a ball on the couch to await the effects. A half hour passed. Nothing.

Feeling
the bitter taste of bile rise in the back of my throat I crawled on my hands and knees to the bathroom, took off my clothes and started the shower. With the water as hot as it could be I stood there for a time, sobbing as I slid down into the tub, and then whimpering like a sad pathetic child.

“Stop
!” I screamed the word over and over again, as if saying it loud enough would make the man in my head actually follow my orders. Where was Gavin?

I stopped the shower and wrapped myself in a towel.
Dripping wet I stumbled out the back door into the wintry night. Perhaps if I called to him he would hear me and come to help. Not knowing what else to do I began to scream at the top of my lungs desperate for him to hear me.  Desperate for someone, anyone, to come and stop the pain. I had to find him.

I ran toward what I thought were the woods, hoping to get to a place he might be within earshot
of. Then suddenly out of nowhere I heard a honking sound. Turning I saw a pair of headlights zooming toward me. They swerved at the last second as the sound of tires squealing in an effort to stop filled the night. Nearby the sound of twisting metal screamed, followed by a sickening crash half a second later.

T
hen I smelled it. Just that one smell was all it took. An intense heat flooded my eyes and my vision sharpened and I saw the car. It was a few hundred feet ahead of me and buried in the trees. In that brief moment my sickness and anguish disappeared and had been replaced by want…
need!

A strange serenity came over me
as I walked slowly toward the car, savoring every moment. That smell, that beautiful sweet smell was coming from the wreckage and I wanted whatever it was. I looked inside the vehicle and saw a young woman unconscious at the wheel. The car was just an old beater, no airbag, and there was blood all over her. I opened the car door, and got as close to her as I could. That sweet and tempting smell…
blood
.

I put my fingers on her
injured forehead and brought some of the blood to my lips. It was wonderful. I felt like a child sneaking frosting off a forbidden birthday cake. I wanted more and felt the siren song of a new addiction pulling me close into a comforting embrace.  This woman was mine.

She was quite beautiful, perhaps nineteen or so with small delicate features.
I focused in on the slight pulse in her neck as a shudder ran through me. Her beautiful, fragile pink skin along with that lovely blue vein was in my reach.

I could smell her so distinctly now
, a mix of blood and perfume. My emotions took over and I felt a tangle of hunger and sexual desire. I wanted to be as close to her as possible. I took off my towel, and taking the stance of a deadly python, coiled my limbs around her. Lowering my head and smelling her neck I felt drunk on just her scent. My mind was spinning, she was glorious.