The Vampires of Soldiers Cove (3 page)

Chapter Four

The March night was clean and still. As I sat on my back step waiting for Gavin I watched my breath rise through the icy air. Since awakening I felt confined by being inside, something that was my preference before. I knew I shouldn’t be outside by myself but despite the warnings given to me I decided it would be ok to sit outside and wait. Soldiers Cove is not exactly a hotbed of activity after eleven pm.

I realized I had forgotten to turn the porch light on
and stood to go back inside when it dawned on me that I didn’t seem to need it. Without the light the yard is pitch black, but I was sitting there looking at everything perfectly lit up.  My eyes had adjusted. The images in the night were sharp and concise.  I could see every tree, every branch, and every leaf. The smallest details were as clear as the big picture.  Every plant seemed to breathe and every gust of wind, no matter how small, was visible as it swished its way through the vivid blackness.

In a strange way these new eyes seemed more acc
ustomed to darkness than to daylight. Earlier I had made the mistake of looking out the window without the Prada glasses, and although it was a dark overcast winter day, I felt a burning so intense I had cried out in shock. I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

Off in the distance a man was talking.
Suddenly I was frightened at what I might do.  Standing to head back inside I realized I recognized the voice. It was the male half of my hallucination.
So much for the voices disappearing
I thought. I closed my eyes and focused in on the man as the sounds of the night disappeared into the back ground. Soon he was the only thing I could hear.

Stupid bitch. You’ll be lucky if I let you
live. You’re such a dumb cunt.

The familiar unease took over and
I shook my head to focus on the other elements of the night once again until he was gone. I lowered my head into my hands. Why was I still hearing this? Hadn’t Angus said I never had to hear anything again if I didn’t want to? There had been enough of this man’s nasty tirades in my ears to last me a lifetime.

An eerie feeling of being watched was with me for about half a second before I saw him.
Gavin was standing in front of me. He had either appeared out of nowhere or come up on me very fast when I turned my head, I couldn’t figure out which. He flashed his brilliant smile and plunked himself down on the step as close to me as he possibly could. Did vampires not get the concept of personal space?

“Miss me?” he said.
I looked at the clock again. Midnight exactly.

“That’s impressive
,” I said.

“I pride myself on my punctuality.
People have such bad manners these days. I think the least you can do is to be where you say you’re gonna be when you said you were gonna be there. Know what I mean?”

“I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Well I guess when you’re a recluse you tend not to notice those things. I’ve had my decades where I hid from the world too. Sometimes humanity just gets to be too much.”

Decades?
How old was he exactly?

“How have you been feeling?”

“Well I looked out the window today without those glasses.”

Gavin scrunched up his face. 
“Ouch,” he said. “Anyone come to visit you?”

“No, I’ve been alone and I haven’t answered the phone.”

“Good girl.  You’re good at following orders. That will come in handy.”

“Yeah about that,” I said turning to look him straight in the eye.
“I’m not sure about all this. Are you sure we should be taking on an old angry vampire? I mean, couldn’t Angus go into hiding or leave? He can’t kill him if he can’t find him right?”

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 h
ere.”  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 into 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.