“I’m sorry Rachel,” he said seeming to sense what I was thinking about. “Last night, it was wrong of me to do that. I’m your guardian and it was inappropriate. I hope you can forgive me.”
“Forgive you?”
“Yes. I only hope I haven’t hurt you in any way and I hope you won’t think less of me. I should have had more restraint, it won’t happen again.” I guess this was the way a vampire told you he regretted the night before. “We’ve lost valuable time. Please dress and meet me in the courtyard in half an hour.” He was being a little too formal for someone who had ripped my clothes off just a few hours ago.
By the time I turned around to face him he was gone. As the door clicked shut behind him I suddenly felt very alone. I had felt a bond with him last night. My blood knew his in an even more intimate way than when he had transformed me and now I was just supposed to forget about it and go back to business it seemed.
I rummaged through the well-stocked closet and found a pair of snug fitting black pants and red tank top. I also put on a black hoodie and a pair of sneakers. I brushed and fixed my hair into a tight ponytail and headed out slamming the door behind me.
The courtyard was a beautiful wide open space. There had been snow the night before and a small amount had stuck to the ground, glinting under the watch of the night’s full moon. Not able to feel the frigid air the same way I did when I was fully human I embraced the icy darkness as I made my way to the center.
I felt his presence about half a second before I saw him once again. His hand was on my shoulder, I turned and he gave me a small awkward smile.
“Beautiful isn’t it? We’re very much creatures of the night you know. Even though we can go around in the daytime it’s not preferred.” He was right. During the day I preferred to be resting, far away from the glare of the light. I thought how nice it would be to be in a bed under a bunch of quilts in a windowless room, preferably naked with the man who had just brushed me off. But that would have to wait.
“Let’s get to it shall we?” he said. I nodded in agreement.
“What do you want me to do?”
“You see that shrub at the other end of the courtyard?”
“Yes.”
“Set it on fire,” he said. The shrub was about two hundred meters away; I focused on it with everything I had. I tried to get a feel on it, the curve of the branches, and the roots in the ground. I got nothing.
“I can’t feel it,” I said, “whenever I’ve done this before I’ve always been able to feel the object in my mind, the details of it. I don’t feel anything.”
He thought to himself for a moment. “Let’s get closer and see if that helps.” We moved closer to the shrub cutting the distance by half. I tried again with the same result. “Even closer,” he said. We moved once more cutting the distance in half once again. Still nothing.
If Gavin was getting frustrated he didn’t show it, I however, was feeling pretty dejected. “Don’t worry,” he said picking up on my disappointment. “Move closer again.” This time I moved much closer closing the distance between myself and the shrub to about ten meters. Then I felt it. I kept my focus on it and in my mind’s eye pictured it catching fire. Then as had happened before there was a spark and the shrub exploded into an intense blue flame. The flames were brighter than I’d ever seen them and I wondered if it was a result of my pent up frustration.
“Excellent,” Gavin said. I smiled to myself proud of my little accomplishment. “Now,” he said “can you put the flames out again?” Once more I fixed my eyes on the shrub. It was burning at an incredible rate. I pictured the flames slowing down and dying out. Instead of the flames dying the shrub burned brighter and caught the tree next to it.
“Whoa, whoa,” Gavin said getting behind me and placing his hands on either side of my head. “Calm now,” he whispered, “be calm.” I felt my mood shift from fear to peace, and then the flames began to slowly die. They dimmed until nothing was left except a few burnt out trees.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No worries.” His brow furrowed with worry even as he said it. “Only you can prevent forest fires...or start them I guess.”
We practiced with different objects and worked on getting further and further away. Even when I exerted a lot of mental energy the furthest distance I could manage was about fifteen feet. Anything further and it was like the object didn’t exist. I just could not get a feel for it.
Next we tried live creatures. There were plenty of birds in the trees for us to practice on, even at night. Though I had killed two people in the last week I really didn’t like the idea of lighting these poor little birds on fire, and I could see Gavin was bothered by it too. Not exactly a surprise given his ability to communicate with animals. We both knew it was necessary however and continued on.
The small black birds were fairly easy targets, when they didn’t try to move that is. I could spark them as long as I was about fifteen feet away and they try to take flight. I needed them to stay pretty still if I was going to do it successfully. By the end of our practice I had killed about five birds. Not bad for a first try.
“That’s enough for now,” Gavin said. “We’ll do some mental exercises after a few hours of rest.”
He was about to say something else when a faint ringing started in the corner of my mind. I had never felt anything like this before and the sudden intensity took me by surprise. It wasn’t a thought, but more like an emotion, an instinct.
The ringing got enormously loud very quickly and pierced my eardrums with all the intensity of a sharp hand full of nails screaming down a chalkboard.
I fell to my knees trying to shut it out. Something was watching us, something hungry and evil.
“What is it?” Gavin said crouching next to me.
“We’re not alone here,” I screamed over the noise that only I could hear. “Something is with us.”
Gavin’s eyes darted wildly around the courtyard. He took a deep breath and smelled the air.
“Get down!” he screamed. I had just enough time to flatten out into the snow face first when the creature came stomping toward us at a rapid speed. Gavin jumped out of the way just in time and it dug its heels into the ground kicking up snow and mud. Turning back angry it had missed him; it lurched forward for another pass. As it turned I lifted my head and got a good look at it. I was sorry I had.
This creature was an awful lot like the ones in my nightmare. It looked me directly in the eyes and snarled with its contorted fangs and twisted face. Its eyes were yellow and the skin appeared to be just barely hanging on. Not human, although at one time had been. Not vampire either. What was this thing? It charged toward Gavin and without even thinking I threw myself in front of him rolling him to the ground.
I had successfully thrown Gavin out of the way completely but was just slightly too late for myself. The demon caught my shoulder as it tried to complete its charge, tearing it off my body completely. I cried out in anguish as the blood shot violently from the open wound, bone and cartilage slopping to the ground. The smell of the blood seemed to excite the thing and it came at me again shrieking an awful high pitched squeal of excitement. Gavin laid me on the ground and dove toward it, plowing into the thing head on.
It toppled over and cried out almost in embarrassment that Gavin had forced him to the ground. I fixated on the horrible creature trying to do the only thing I could think of to do. I couldn’t get a feel for it though. It and Gavin were tangled up together and I was afraid with one false move I might spark the wrong one, or both.
Gavin knew what I was trying to do and with all his strength picked up the being and threw it into a nearby tree stunning it temporarily, just long enough for Gavin to bring the enormous tree down on top of it. The creature was pinned.
“The tree,” he yelled. I fixated on the tree and Gavin jumped off just as it sparked and burst into flames. The poor pathetic being trapped under it caught fire as well and let out shrieks of agony as it burned. Even
though this thing had tried to kill me I felt immense pity for it and turned away not wanting to hear its final dying cries.
At last I could feel it was dead. I didn’t sense it in my mind anymore. A moment later it collapsed in on itself in a gelatinous mass of blood and tissue.
“It’s ok,” Gavin said as he scooped me up to take me inside. “We killed it.”
“What the hell was it?” I asked through my clenched teeth. The blood from my shoulder seemed to be clotting up but the shoulder itself was completely gone.
“A revenant.”
Chapter Thirteen
I was soon back in my room being attended to by Gavin, a pretty young blonde vampire, and another vampire who looked more like one of the Hell’s Angels. He had long dark hair and was clad all in leather. The pain was awful. I expected that at any moment it should start to subside, but instead it seemed to be getting worse.
“Daniel, pass me the scissors. It got you good,” she said shaking her head in disbelief. I nodded in agreement and even that movement was agonizing. I decided that keeping as still as I possibly could, would be my best bet. That or start screaming, but I didn’t want to look weak in front them. It would be letting them down somehow I thought if I couldn’t even stand to be examined and treated. Not wanting to seem like more of a burden than an asset I gripped the bedpost and kept quiet.
As I leaned forward clutching a white towel to my chest she dressed the wound. “It shouldn’t take too long for her to heal,” she said to Gavin. “If she wills herself to sleep, maybe a few hours.”
That sounded like a great idea even if just to escape the pain. “You hear that Rachel?” Gavin asked me. “Do you understand? You have to make yourself sleep once she’s finished. You’ll heal very fast if you do.” I wanted to tell him that I was bleeding not deaf and I had heard her for myself, but speaking would have put me in more pain than I was willing to be in at the moment so I just nodded at him indicating I understood.
Gavin looked confused and worried. He leaned down and brushed my hair out of my face, stroking it while the dressing was being done. It seemed to drag on forever.
Finally she was finished and they gently laid me down on my stomach. The blanket was pulled up to my waist but no further as not to irritate the dressing. For the first time since I’d been made vampire I felt cold. I wished the blanket could go up all the way but hopefully I’d be sleeping soon and it wouldn’t matter.
“Sleep now,” Gavin said as he continued to sit by me and stroke my hair making sure it was off to the side and not touching my back. “When you wake you’ll be almost completely healed. I’ll be here,” he said.
Closing my eyes I focused on sleep. It took longer than normal as I kept getting distracted by the pain, but soon enough I was pulled under. I felt my shoulder contract in my dreams as it healed. The process in and of itself was painful. I could feel the muscles, tendons, and skin being pulled back together and reforming at an alarming rate. Something that would have been impossible during my human life was happening in mere hours. I dreamed about the revenant, its glowing eyes, its peeling skin, and the jagged and yellow fangs. The creature was definitely human at one time which was truly disturbing to me. What had happened to this person to be dealt such a cruel fate? To be turned into a true monster with no emotions, only relentless suffering and blood hunger.
In my dreams I saw my own face in the mirror slowly turning from human, to vampire, to revenant. So much pain, it must have been too much for my mind to handle because it was then that I woke up.
I awakened to the sound of two voices talking from across the room. Opening my eyes I saw Gavin and James staring daggers at each other. I closed my eyes again pretending to still be asleep. It sounded like they were arguing and I had healed just enough to be nosy and find out why.
“Things are more serious now. We can’t be wasting time with you playing guardian to a new vampire. We should be training to fight and kill these things.” James was almost yelling.
“It was only one revenant and as bad as that is we don’t know for a fact that there are more,” Gavin argued. “You’re acting as if we had a horde of them here. And besides she knew it was there before we even saw it. If she hadn’t been there I’m not sure I could have killed it.”
“If she hadn’t been there you wouldn’t have been in the courtyard in the first place,” he shot back. “How did it get on the grounds anyway? Have you thought about that? Maybe the reason your little student sensed it is because she’s the one that put it there.”
I didn’t like the way James said ‘student’. He made it sound almost dirty. “Listen to yourself. That’s ridiculous, up until today she had never even seen one, let alone create and control one enough to sneak it into the sanctuary.”
“You want her for your mate don’t you?” James said as if he considered the idea of that repulsive. Gavin was silent. “You disgust me. Keep her as your whore if you must but anything beyond that is unforgiveable. She is inferior to you and to our family. Her creation was an insult to our entire clan. There’s a reason we haven’t had one of them in our ranks for over three hundred years.”
“You would rather hold on to your narrow minded ideals than find a way to deal with what Samuel is bringing down upon us? You have a lot of arrogance brother,” Gavin said. Now James was silent.
“Get out of here,” Gavin told him. “I don’t want to argue this with you while more important things are happening.”
“Fine, take care of your whore, but when this is all over and we’ve finished with her I’m going to petition the council to end her. I will see that this whole thing is set right again, I promise.”
“Get out!” Gavin said making a low pitched growling noise. My mind was reeling. Would they really decide to execute me once I had served some kind of purpose? I didn’t know much about the politics of this inner world I had so recently become part of but surely I thought they wouldn’t end my existence over nothing more than burying an unpleasant piece of history.
I heard the door close behind James as he exited the room and decided to sit up. “You heard all of that didn’t you?”
“Yes.” I was shaking with anger and fear. “Can he really do that? Would they kill me just on his suggestion?”
Gavin quickly moved to my side and took my face in his hands. “It won’t come to that,” he said.
“Oh my god. He hates me that much?” I said knowing it was a question I already had the answer to. I had heard it in their conversation.
“You’ll be useful and will prove yourself to be a good and loyal servant to Angus. Do that and you won’t be in any danger. I won’t let that happen.” The portion of the conversation about taking me as a mate filtered through my mind but somehow this didn’t seem like the time or place for that question.
“Sleep again,” he said laying me down. He positioned himself next to me on the bed and ran his hands up and down my back. “When you wake the next time you should be healed.”
Sleeping was the last thing I wanted to do but I decided listening to Gavin would be my best bet if I was going to stay alive. I no longer felt cold at least and so I lay uncovered, closed my eyes and drifted down, this time into a dreamless sleep.
I woke some time later alone in the room. There was a white shirt waiting for me on a chair next to the bed and I grabbed it on my way to the bathroom. Studying the reflection of my shoulder in the mirror I was taken aback. As promised I was fully healed. Just a short time ago my shoulder had been torn off, now after just a few hours of rest it had grown back and completely closed up, not even a scar remained. I guess that was one reason to be grateful to be a vampire, although if I had not been made vampire I wouldn’t have been in this predicament in the first place.
I threw the shirt on and was making my way back to the bed when I heard a knock at the door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Holly,” a soft feminine voice said, “I came to look at your shoulder.” I opened the door slightly to s
ee the same young blonde who had treated me earlier. Deciding she was safe I let her in, although in the back of my mind now I wondered which of these people might want to kill me and which might not. Now that I knew what James was planning it didn’t hurt to be extra careful.
“Hi,” she said bouncing in. “You’re looking a lot better than when I saw you last.”
“For sure,” I agreed.
“Let me see your wound.” I sat on the chair and pulled my shirt up for her examination. She ran her fingers over what had once been a bleeding hole in my body. “Excellent,” she exclaimed, “you’re all healed up.” Holly took another chair and sat down with me. She was looking me up and down like she was judging me in some way. “And I finally get to meet the vamp who is stealing my little brother’s heart.”
The words didn’t match the picture. If she was Gavin’s older sister she must have been made vampire while she was still very young. “So Gavin is your brother?” I said trying to sound casual.
“Oh yes. You know he’s never had a proper mate. We are hoping he will find someone suitable soon.” She winked at me as if to say ‘and maybe that will be you’. “He’s been smitten with you for quite some time now.”
I sat in confusion at her statement. How could that be? We had only just met. “And when he meets someone he can move out of the sanctuary and join the living. Have a regular kind of life. He never really had a chance to do that before he was turned due to the circumstances. My mate and I are about to buy a house, moving out among the people again. It’s been a long time since we did that. I’m looking forward to living on the outside again. The sanctuary gets old after about fifty years or so.”
“What do you mean he’s been smitten with me for quite some time?” I asked echoing her statement.
“Oh shit. I forget that you’re new and don’t know about these things,” she said seeming to kick herself mentally for mentioning it. “I don’t suppose he’s told you the story, I mean how could he?”
The Vampires of Soldiers Cove Page 7
