The Vampires of Soldiers Cove

by Jessica MacIntyre

  Gavin was silent for a moment in contemplation. “If only it were that easy,” he said.

  “Why isn’t it that easy?” He smiled at me again. I wished he’d stop doing that.

  “It will all become clear in the next little while. You just have to be patient.” He stood and extended his hand to me. “We better get going.” We made our way across the back yard but just before we approached the tree line his expression changed and his body tensed with anxiety. “Listen, stay close to me in there ok? I won’t let anything happen to you no matter what you see, but if I tell you to do something just do it.”

  Now I was worried.

  “Relax,” he said touching my shoulder. “You’re going to be just fine, we’ll be back before you know it.” Bolting back toward my room seemed like a good option at that point, but I followed Gavin into the woods for a second time anyway.

  We walked as we had the night I was turned, only this time it wouldn’t have been necessary to hold my hand and lead me. My new vampire eyes were more than adequate to see through the dense bushes, quite a contrast to when I had walked in complete blindness. Gavin held it just the same.

  Soon we came to a clearing. “Here we are,” he said.

  “There’s no one here.” Aside from the slight snowfall that had begun during our walk there was nothing.

  “They’re all inside. You have your pendant?” he pulled his own out of his shirt, identical to mine. I took it out and showed him. “Good,” he said, “close your eyes and hold it.”

  I clasped my hand tightly around the charm and shut my eyes, when I opened them again I was in disbelief. We were standing in front of what looked like a cross between an elaborate home and an old gothic church. The very top arched up toward the sky blending into the night. Even with vampire eyes one could not tell where it ended and the night began. It was massive, much too massive to be hidden away in the woods of Soldiers Cove. I stared in wonder.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “Welcome to the sanctuary.”

  Chapter Five

  We made our way through a dimly lit hallway until we came to the entrance of a larger room. Standing just outside the door Gavin drew a deep hesitant breath. “Here we go.”

  The fact that he was nervous didn’t exactly inspire confidence. I surmised there must be something terrible waiting inside that room because I could not imagine what on earth could actually make a vampire uneasy. So far I had only seen two things. The impending arrival of this Samuel fellow...and whatever was in that room.

  Everyone was standing with their backs to us so I didn’t see anyone’s face at first. The crowd was parted in half and I was relieved when Gavin didn’t try to walk us straight up the aisle, instead moving to one side and hugging the wall. He motioned for me to stand on the inside closest the stone. Doing as I was told we made our way to the front of the room until we were just below where Angus was getting ready to speak on some type of pulpit. I never thought him the type but tonight he looked very much like a priest about to give a sermon to his followers, which just happened to be a church full of vampires.

  Gavin stood in front of me in a protective stance as Angus put his hands on the podium preparing to speak.

  The room fell silent. Even without knowing much of what was going on I could tell that the way they came to attention at his smallest movement conveyed great respect.

  He raised his hands, “Caide Mille Falte children.”

  “Caide Mille Falte,” they echoed back.

  Again with the Gaelic I thought. I hoped this whole night was not going to be in that almost dead language because I really only knew a few phrases. Luckily that was one of them. It was ‘One Hundred Thousands Welcomes’ and I was pretty sure I had heard someone say it recently, although that memory was a bit fuzzy.

  Thankfully he continued on in English. “I know everyone is aware of the threat that we will soon face. We don’t know when Samuel will come, but he is coming and we have to be ready. I trust that you all have been preparing for that day, but tonight I have something else that might help us in our fight.” He motioned to Gavin and he walked me up to the platform still keeping me protectively behind him. Angus touched my arm and Gavin moved to the side exposing me to the crowd, His fear palpable all the while.

  There was a moment of shocked silence before at least half of the room went into an uproar. One young man thrust toward the stage screaming with fangs bared. “What have you done?” he demanded. Gavin sprung in front of me baring his fangs back at the man, his eyes turned black and a deep animalistic growl arose from his throat.

  I recognized the young man. His name was James and he was my neighbor alright, just as Gavin had said. He was one of the fifteen MacDonald kids that grew up just over the hill. I had attended school with him and a few of his siblings. He was always pleasant enough whenever I ran into him in town, and perhaps a little flirty as well, but tonight he looked at me like I was some kind of threat. His voice was strained with anger and panic.

  James backed up ever so slightly. I could tell he was afraid of Gavin but he continued on screaming, “Now is not the time for new creations, especially a fucking Acadian! I say we take her head off now before she gets us all killed.”

  I was too busy focusing on the ‘take her head off’ portion of that statement to worry about why he was so concerned with my being Acadian. I decided to file that away for another time when I wasn’t scared shitless.

  Looking around the large room I recognized quite a few faces. These were people I had known all my life. One in particular caught my eye. Ellie MacNeil, who I always thought was a feeble old lady, seemed much less so tonight. She looked at least twenty years younger and her cane was not propping her up for support like it usually was. The woman who always gave me an oatmeal raisin cookie and a glass of milk when I was a little girl growled and spat in my general direction. I was never the most popular person in our little community but it never crossed my mind that they might one day consider decapitating me because I disgusted them so much.

  “Be silent!” Angus boomed, and suddenly the room was so quiet everyone was afraid to take even the smallest of breaths. “How dare you question me? Nobody will touch this child. She may be the key, not just to our survival, but to many innocents on this island as well.”

  He took me by the shoulders and moved me forward. The last thing I wanted to do was get any closer to a bunch of hostile vampires but I shuffled up anyway. They were all giving me the once over. Some had hateful and venomous looks. Others looked on, merely curious.

  “She has gifts. Things we’ve not seen in over a century. I believe she can read minds and hear over long distances, and perhaps, with Gavin’s help, she can learn to control her abilities and maybe even discover some that are as of yet unknown. As you know friends, when a vampire has this much potential they must be protected, nurtured, cared for.” He scanned the crowd giving them a sharp threatening look. “Nobody will touch her. You touch her you answer to me. You don’t want that.”

  There were a few more moments of tense silence which I thankfully took as their understanding of the need to not cut my head off. Suddenly a small voice from the back yelled, “How will she defend herself?”

  With the change of air in the room Gavin’s eyes returned to normal and his fangs retracted. “I am her guardian. I will teach her. We don’t know how much time we have but I’ll train her as much as I can, and if she cannot be sufficiently trained in the time given I will protect her myself. Angus has asked me to lay down my life, and I will.”

  Lay down his life? Gavin was saying he’d die for me? Up until this moment he had seemed cocky and maybe even arrogant to a degree. Now he seemed almost regal in his sincerity. The room fell back into order as Angus continued to speak, but the words were lost on me. Gavin took my hand and we exited the room as quickly as he could get me out of there.

  Walking in silence to the back door of my little house I was burning with questions, but I wanted back int
o the safety of my home as soon as possible, and if talking was going to slow us down even by a few seconds that was the last thing I wanted.

  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 the 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 b
ut 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.