He turned away trying to hide his vulnerability. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m sorry too.” I crossed the house to the bedroom and closed the door.
“Shit,” I heard him say to himself. A few moments later I heard the truck start and make its way down the driveway.
Chapter Twenty
Maggie scratched at the door to come in. I opened up and let the little dog inside. She was full of dirt from digging yet again.
“Lay on the mat,” I said, not impressed. Ever since Gavin had disappeared the dog had been restless and just generally badly behaved, and for some reason she really disliked Ian. Whenever he was in the house she ran and hid under the bed.
The little dog knew she was in trouble and looked up at me with her sad brown eyes. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t stay mad at her. I leaned down and gave her a gentle pat. “I know girl,” I said. “You miss Daddy. I do too.”
I left Maggie on the mat and went outside to inspect the newest hole in my yard, but to my surprise the yard had no holes. I figured she must have found a spot in the woods to get dirty. If she was going to dig out there that wasn’t nearly as bad as digging in the yard, so I decided the mat punishment was off.
I went back inside and cleaned her off, and then we sat on the couch. Ian had been gone for three days and I had no idea where he was. Nobody had seen him at the sanctuary and I was getting worried. I needed to hunt soon and felt safer doing it when he was with me. He had taught me some tricks about blood influencing and I was fairly certain that I could will people into submission, but he was a true expert. Ian was so talented at it that it was like he could get into a human’s mind and walk around in there, rummaging through their past and readjusting memories. Not just recent ones, but ones from long ago. If he wasn’t back in the next few hours I’d have to go on my own and I didn’t quite trust myself to do that yet. I thought about asking Holly but she and her family were still sitting vigil at Alexander’s bedside.
The phone rang interrupting my thoughts. I barely had a moment to put it to my ear when I heard Holly’s voice. “Rachel, you have to come to the sanctuary.”
“What’s wrong?” At this point it could have been any number of things.
“Alexander’s awake. Just come now ok?” I didn’t understand why his being awake was cause for concern now. The appropriate amount of time had passed and he should be fine. She obviously didn’t want to talk about it over the phone so I agreed and hung up.
Upon arrival she took me directly into his little room. Alexander was sitting cross legged on the bed with a large sketch pad and pencil, the floor littered with drawings he’d already finished. His new found vampire speed had him drawing at an accelerated rate and he was laser focused to the point where nobody could talk to him.
“He still isn’t talking,” Holly said. “I’ve never seen this before.” Considering how old she was that was cause for concern.
“But his change is complete otherwise?”
“Yes. But it’s like he’s… disturbed.” I went over and sat on the bed across from him, he didn’t look up. I touched his cheek, snapping him back into the present. He looked around like he was frightened and I couldn’t help but feeling a great sadness for him. This had not been what he was expecting to wake up to.
“Hi,” I said gently. He looked at me like a timid animal, afraid of everyone and everything around him. I took the sketch pad and pencil from him and laid them down on the bedside table. Then, taking his hands, I looked into his eyes. The ring was now all the way around. All at once the tears came, and suddenly he was clinging to me like a frightened child.
“It’s alright,” I said rocking him back and forth. He reached up and grabbed me with all his new strength and pressed our foreheads together. He was so strong that I felt the bones in my face shifting around under my skin as he tried to show me whatever it was I had begun to see the last time I was with him.
The darkness swirled and there was nothing but raw sound. A loud screaming filled my mind. I knew right away it was Gavin. Alexander knew something about why he had begun killing again but he most likely didn’t even realize he’d known it until after he was turned. The screaming was horrific and miserable. Then I heard the words I’d heard in my dream.
Come find me...
Alexander pulled away and as I sat there looking into this eyes he was silently pleading with me to help him make sense of it.
“You know something about Gavin?” He didn’t have any response but to pick up his sketch pad and keep drawing.
I felt the shards of my facial bones painfully move back into place as the boy picked up his pencil and returned to his panicked drawing. I picked up one of the drawings on the floor to see what he was so enamored with. It was just blackness. Other pencils were on the floor and bedside table that had been worn down to the nub from drawing pictures, over and over again, of a big dark hole in the middle of the page.
“What did he show you?” Holly asked.
“He knows something,” I said. “Something about Gavin but I can’t make sense of it.”
“I can’t see how he would know anything,” she said. She was right, considering Gavin had been gone for about a month and Alexander had only been turned three days ago.
“What’s going to happen to him?” I asked. Holly motioned for me to follow her, and we went out into the hallway closing the door behind us.
“I’m not sure. We’ve never dealt with anything like this. He doesn’t seem dangerous but we’ll have to keep an eye on him.” I knew what she was really saying. If Alexander was going to be a burden or a threat they would stake him.
“Hey, I’m getting a little worried about Ian. Have you seen him?”
Holly snorted. “If he’s gone let him go,” she said.
“He took my truck.”
“Trust me, if all you lost with Ian is your truck you got away easy. You still have Gavin’s car.” It was true but I didn’t exactly feel like driving it. That car was his baby and held too many memories for me to sit in the driver’s seat alone. “Let him stay gone.”
I was getting annoyed. Holly may be holding a grudge against her brother for something but he had helped me out during a difficult time, and for that I felt a certain amount of loyalty.
“What is it with you two anyway?”
“Just trust me ok?” Holly turned her back to walk away but I grabbed her roughly by the arm, jolting her back in my direction and made her face me. She looked at me, stunned.
“You wanna lose that hand?” I should have backed off since she was much older and stronger than I was, but I didn’t. Frustration had me in its grip, crowding out my common sense.
“It’ll grow back,” I said. Holly pulled her arm away, insulted that I’d challenge her.
“Fine.” she hissed at me, “You want to know so badly why I hate Ian so much I’ll tell you.” She crossed her arms and looked me sternly in the eye. “When the Acadians were being deported from Port Royal Ian was there.” She stopped for a moment and her features softened remembering. “He was in charge of who went on which boat.”
“What do you mean?” I was getting a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach like I was going to be sorry to hear what was coming next.
“He was a purest, he and James together, meaning he was very insulted and very angry at how the Acadians had refused the gift. So as punishment he took the children...ripped them right from their mother’s arms in some cases…” She had to stop again to collect herself, wringing her hands as she relived the horrible memory. “He put them on a boat with starving, blood hungry vampires, who were still human enough to be blood influenced and set them adrift on the ocean, but not before he programed them to kill.”
I was floored. “And he laughed, Rachel. He laughed. He said they’d ‘have to eat sometime.’ And he was right, they did. None of those children lived to see shore again.”
“Oh my god,” was all I could think to say.
“And I c
reated him. He’s a monster, as big a monster as James was toward the end, and I created that. He should never have been turned, neither should Gavin or Alexander. They are mistakes and the sooner you realize that, the better off you’re going to be.” Before I could say another word Holly turned and was gone.
I ran out of the sanctuary and got off the grounds as fast as I could. I just wanted out of there. I ran through the dense woods toward home, running just for the sake of running. I ran so hard and fast that I almost didn’t have time to stop when I realized someone was in my path just before I reached the edge of my yard. For a moment when I came to a standstill I couldn’t grasp what I was seeing. Then I recognized him. For the second time when coming on to my property I had been ambushed. This time it was Gavin, and he was looking me right in the face.
We simply stared at one another, waiting for the other to say something. Then he put his arms around me and kissed me full and hard on the mouth. I kissed him back. I had missed him so much that right at this very moment I didn’t care what he had done. He once told me he’d forgive me anything, and right now all I wanted to do was forgive him and take him in. I so desperately wanted things back the way they were that I’d even overlook his trying to kill me.
Something was off though. I couldn’t grasp what it was but I knew he was different. I pulled away. His eyes hardened and his brows knitted themselves together.
“Don’t you love me anymore?” he said. I said nothing. He let out a deep sigh as if he was disappointed at my lack of a response. “Remember when you did a kindness for your Aunt? Do a kindness for me now.”
“What?” Then it finally dawned on me. “Yeah, I remember,” I lied, trying to keep my voice steady. He pulled a stake from his jacket. I backed up and prepared to defend myself, my eyes flooding with their angry molten heat.
“Kill me,” he said. “Kill me just like you killed your Aunt.”
Chapter Twenty One
Gavin took a step toward me, backing me up into the treeline, then reaching into his pocket yet again he pulled out another stake. “Here,” he said his lips spreading wide, “we can go together. Just like it’s supposed to be.” The stake flew through the air and I reached up, catching it in midflight.
Slowly we circled each other like two wildcats, one waiting for the other to flinch so they could pounce and rip the other’s throat out. I didn’t blink, or breathe. I focused on his every little movement. If he was going to strike I had to be ready. He smiled at me just as if we were lying in bed looking into each other’s eyes. “I love you so much Rach, this will be good, you’ll see.”
In a heartbeat he was about an inch away, and at the last moment I raised my leg kicking him backward, sending him flying all the way across the yard and into the deck. The entire structure came down in a loud crash, the wood splintering under his weight. He wasn’t fazed. I backed up putting as much distance between us as I could. He simply stood, brushed the dust and wood from his clothes, and came at me again, screaming.
I moved at the last possible moment and he ran himself right into the toolshed. Another crash, along with the sound of clanging metal filled the air as it came down on top of him. An eerie silence filled the yard. I didn’t see him under the debris, but he had to be there. I waited for him to rise up, bracing myself for the next confrontation, but there was nothing.
My entire body trembling, I slowly inched my way to the downed structure. Perhaps he had fallen on the stake. Perhaps I would look and find nothing but dust, and this creature, whatever it was, would be dead. I got up close and saw no movement.
Reaching down to move a large piece of the roof that had fallen in I held my breath. I placed my hand on it, and had moved it about a millimeter when suddenly, he sprang.
Grabbing me by the throat we flew through the air, all the way across the yard, and landed squarely on the windshield of the McLauren. I heard the crash and felt the shards of broken glass digging their way deep into my back as I laid there, helplessly splayed on the wreckage. Gavin raised his stake and thrust it down with all his strength, skewering me through the stomach and pinning me to the vehicle.
“There,” he said, “now you can’t get away.” The pain was incredible. I smelled and felt the blood escaping from my body through the place where he’d pierced me, my intestines tangled up in a mess of wood and glass. I was still holding my stake in hand and Gavin reached for it. I knew if he got hold of it he’d wield the final blow turning me to dust forever.
With all the strength I could summon I threw the stake from one hand to the other and swung it up in one swift motion, driving it straight through his neck. Gavin’s mouth gaped open in a silent scream. Blood sloshed everywhere, its liquid heat dripping down onto my face.
His hands grabbed at the stake, desperate to pull it out and as he did something else overtook him. He jumped off the car and doubled over once again in the same distress I’d seen him suffer before.
As fast as he could manage he took off, back in the direction of the woods, stake still firmly implanted through his neck.
With bloody hands I reached down, pulling the stake out of my stomach and releasing myself from the totaled car. The windshield and hood were entirely caved in. Rolling off the hood and onto the ground my wound began to close, but not nearly fast enough. I couldn’t afford to lay there for long being so vulnerable. I pushed myself up and staggered to the front door, which I rarely used, and rammed it open with my shoulder. It was locked and the key was in the house, and so keeping my hands over the open hole in my stomach I crashed through it knocking pieces of doorframe down on top of me.
I turned to lock it behind me out of old habit but realized that it was now impossible. Still bleeding profusely I reached into my pocket with bloody hands for my cell phone. It came out in pieces. “Shit,” I said. Leaving a trail of red blotches behind me on the floor as I stumbled to the kitchen I then picked up the house phone, dialing Daniel’s cell.
“Rachel?” he answered, after what seemed like a hundred rings.
“Come quick,” was all I could manage to get out. There was a click on the line followed by the familiar dial tone that let me know he’d hung up. I slumped down the wall and onto the floor to wait for help. Poor Maggie was whimpering in the corner when I came in, but when she saw me on the floor she promptly ran over and began nudging her nose in my face. I hugged her close for comfort and stared at the ceiling while my insides did their agonizing dance, healing and moving back into their proper place.
Daniel took a good hour to get there and I could tell by his face that he’d already seen the deck, the shed and the car when he walked in. “What the fuck happened?” he said.
“Gavin was here, but it’s not Gavin,” I must have sounded like a lunatic, but it was an old familiar feeling. Seeing I was injured he gently lifted me in his massive arms and carried me onto the bed. His long hair was tied back and he was clad all in leather looking like a fallen Hell’s Angel.
“Tell me,” he said. I told him what had happened and my theory. I had to give him credit, he listened all the way through without interrupting or telling me it was crazy. I had thought about calling Holly but right after our confrontation at the sanctuary I didn’t think she was interested in helping Gavin, if indeed there was enough of him left to be helped.
He paused in thought taking the whole thing in. “Do you think someone else is using his body?” he said.
“I don’t know. Is that even possible? I just know that thing is not Gavin. He said that I killed my Aunt, but I didn’t. Gavin did it for me. We never told anyone.” Daniel frowned. I wasn’t sure if it was his disapproval for us having broken the rules or the thought of someone using Gavin’s body against him that was making him unhappy.
“Alexander knows something,” I said. “He’s been showing me things I can’t quite make sense of but I know it’s about Gavin.” I swallowed. “You must think I’m crazy. Maybe I am, god knows I’ve always been.”
He gave me a thoughtful look.
“If you say it’s so, than I believe you. There’s nothing crazy about you at all.” I gave a sigh of relief on hearing those words. I’d given him an unheard of explanation and he hadn’t dismissed me. For that I was grateful.
“Maybe that explains why the hunters can’t find him.” I said. I considered sharing the information Aries had given me a few days ago about how he could smell Gavin all through the woods of Soldiers Cove, but whenever they tracked the scent the satyrs would find nothing. I decided against it. The satyrs might be the best chance of bringing Gavin – the real Gavin if indeed this creature had not hidden his real body or warped his mind entirely – home alive.
“It is...unheard of for them to be unsuccessful,” he said. “They are getting restless.”
“So am I,” I said, “but I don’t know what to do or where to turn to find out the truth.”
The Vampires of Soldiers Cove: One Crow Sorrow Page 13
