The Vampires of Soldiers Cove (5 page)

The need to taste her delicate pink skin overtook me.
I parted my lips and lay my tongue against her. Slowly and carefully I licked the length of her neck, up down, up down. I wanted to taste her. What I wanted more than anything was for her to wake up. I wanted to taste her fear.  To know what she tasted like the moment I took her life. I felt like a cat that plays with a mouse before eating it.  My sadistic desire amped up from zero to ten and I laughed at the thought of toying with this fragile young thing.  Perhaps giving her the chance to run, to think she was safe before pouncing and killing her.  I had never wanted anything so much as to feel her fear when the light went out in her eyes.  Perhaps even to hear the bitter sound of her begging for her life.  Unfortunately for me she was out cold.

I couldn’t wait any longer.
The moment I made the decision to bite I felt a sharp pain in my mouth as my fangs grew with excitement. I threw my head back and growled.

Mine!

In that moment I was more animal than human and I realized the full extent of my power and lethalness.
  Tearing hungrily at her neck I opened her jugular vein and let the blood fill my mouth completely. She was so lovely, delicious and sensual I thought I might actually orgasm. I writhed naked on top of her as I fed, feeling like I would never be able to get enough.  I had never reveled in anything so much. Even though I had been living for twenty four years it was only just now in this instant that I felt alive. I pressed our bodies together and bled the beautiful delicate creature until there was nothing left and I was finally satisfied.

I leaned back for a long moment and closed my eyes in satiated bliss.
The voices were once again gone, the sickness and burning only a memory. I slithered out of the car and found my towel. I felt a surge of physical strength race through my body so hard that I literally shook. Looking at the wreckage I knew the humans would never believe this was a normal accident. A never before used instinct told me I needed to cover this up somehow. My eyes darted around in the dark looking for somewhere to hide the woman.

I found myself wishing that the car had caught on fire.
They’d never be able to tell what actually killed her if she was burned beyond recognition.  Staring at the car I pictured the flames for a moment. I was only fantasizing about it but a second later there was a spark from underneath. The gas tank ignited and then the car was ablaze in a hail of bright blue flame. 

Had I really just wished for fire and then had that wish granted?
I didn’t want to take too much time to think about that. For the moment I was just grateful the evidence of what I had done would be gone and my soul flooded with relief.

I ran back to the house as fast as I could, which was faster than I thought possible for a person to move.
I remembered how fast Angus had come at me that night in the woods and was sure I could now probably match or better his speed.

N
othing existed inside me except peace and silence, and for the moment it was all I cared about. The miserable way I had felt when I woke up was gone. I strode back to my bedroom, dropped my towel on the floor and crawled naked into bed to sleep a deep and dreamless sleep.

Chapter Seven

Yet another whole day had passed when I opened my eyes again to see Gavin sitting on the edge of my bed.  I pulled the covers up over me realizing I was naked and resenting the intrusion.  He had never just come into my house before.

“Hey!” I said.
“What are you doing?” He eyed me with concern. “What’s wrong?”

“I should have been here.
I should have come for you sooner.”

“What?” I said confused.
Then I remembered the woman in the car. A sickening revelation overcame me. I was a murderer. I wondered if everything I had heard about vampires being damned was true because if I wasn’t condemned to hell before, I undoubtedly would be now.

“Oh no.”

“You killed an innocent.”   Gavin lowered his head in his hands, rubbing his forehead in anguish. “Now there are going to be consequences for you...and me.  I’m going to take responsibility for it but I don’t know if it will be enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have to go before the council tonight. They are going to decide what should be done. There’s very little tolerance for something like this. We have survived in Cape Breton for hundreds of years by being very careful. There are rules against killing indiscriminately. You broke that rule last night. Of course, if I had been here I could have stopped you.”

I was so focused on that woman’s blood at the time I couldn’t think of any way that anyone on earth would have been able to stop me, not even him.

“I’m sorry.
I woke up and I was so sick, and the voices were back. They’re gone now but they were back just like they were before. I took pills but it didn’t help. It was an accident.”

“I know,” he said.
“James and I got here just as you were finishing up. You’re lucky that car caught on fire. That might help you since she was so badly burned people will just assume that was how she died.”

I remembered how I had wished for the fire in one moment and in the next it was a reality.
“I’m not sure it was luck,” I said.

“Trust me it was very lucky.”

“No. I wished for fire. I wanted it, and then it was there. Maybe it was a coincidence but I don’t think it really was. I looked at the car and pictured it in flames and then suddenly the fire was there.”

“That’s impossible Rachel.
You’re telling me you started that fire with your mind somehow?”

“Maybe
...”

“Ok, think very hard.
Before the car caught fire did you smell smoke or see anything leaking from underneath?”

“No, but if I had I don’t think I would have noticed it.
Once I smelled the blood that was all I could focus on.” It was true. The entire forest could have caught fire around me and I wouldn’t have cared. The smell of the blood had flooded my mind and turned me into some kind of crazed animal. I doubled over sick with grief.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself.
Those are your natural instincts. You’re new at this so you might be shown mercy. I should have been here for you.” The thought of something happening to me was frightening but it was also equally frightening to think of something happening to Gavin.

“What will they do to me?”
I swallowed hard hoping he’d say something that wasn’t as bad as I was thinking.

“If they decide not to show
you mercy they’ll stake you.  Me as well.”

“I want to try something,” he said after a long silence.
Gavin got a piece of paper and crumpled it up. He grabbed a bowl out of the kitchen and placed the paper in it. “If you actually did start that fire, it could help you. My god, if we had somebody who could do that the fight with Samuel might be over in a matter of minutes. Try it.” I saw the hope in his eyes but it did nothing to quash the fear that was settling into the pit of my stomach.

I looked at the bowl in the same way I had looked at the car.
I pictured the paper within it sparking and catching fire. There was nothing. Gavin tried to hide his disappointment but it showed for a brief second, long enough to make me doubt myself.

“Take a deep breath.
Let every other thought or worry in your mind go and try it again.”  That was easier said than done. Picturing yourself being staked was proving to be a bit of a distraction.

I closed my eyes and took a few moments to empty my mind.
I tried again. I imagined the paper inside the bowl in flames in as much detail as I could. From the corner of my eye I could still see the look of doubt on Gavin’s face. Something about that made me angry. I was angry that he would doubt my ability to do this even though he had every right to, seeing as how I doubted it myself.

Why the anger came I couldn’t say, but a second after it crept in the paper sparked and burst into flames.
Gavin’s doubt turned to amazement and then to relief. He looked at me and smiled his biggest smile. “Amazing. You have a chance to live perhaps.”

“I won’t let you take responsibility for what I did,” I said.
“If they are going to kill you I won’t help them. I won’t do anything at all. If they kill you they may as well kill me too.”

Gavin
raised his eyebrows in both confusion and shock at the proclamation. “Rachel, that’s not how it works.”

“No
, I mean it. They’ll either show both of us mercy, or none at all.” I could see he was truly touched.   As the paper continued to burn the rims of his eyes grew red and he blinked as tears began to sting them. Moving closer to me he took my face in his hands.

“Don’t do that,” he
said, “I’m not worth your death. My fate may have been sealed a long time ago. They’ll give you a new guardian.” For some reason I couldn’t wrap my mind around I didn’t want to think about a life of immortality without Gavin in it. It seemed empty and pointless. It would be more of a hell than the hell I had lived in with the mental illness.

“I only want you,” I whispered.
He pressed his forehead to mine and held it there. Suddenly I was desperate for him to kiss me, but he pulled away.

“We’re
expected at the sanctuary,” he said, “I’ll be waiting for you outside.

Chapter Eight

There were four council members. Angus was one, old Ellie MacNeil was another and James was there as well. I didn’t recognize the other but they called her Mariah. It didn’t give me any great comfort to know that two vampires, one who wanted to behead me and one who had spat at me were sitting there. Angus looked as though someone had taken the wind out of his sails, as if he were resigned to something he didn’t want to happen. That something was probably my execution.

Gavin and I were
kneeling on the floor in front of the long table which the council members sat behind on wrought iron throne like chairs. Upon entering the sanctuary the vials were taken from around our necks to prevent us from leaving as well.

I wondered what would happen if I were to suddenly go missing.
Would anyone look for me? I had no family to speak of, except of course my aunt, who would not notice I was gone for at least another week. I had no friends either who would be checking in on me. That was the thing about mental illness. People either thought you were too crazy to be around, or not crazy at all and faking the whole thing for attention or to justify some type of bad behavior. Either way they had an excuse to dismiss you entirely. I hoped Gizzy wouldn’t starve.

“This is precisely why we have a process we need to follow,” James said to Angus, his muscular frame leaning forward against the table.
His long dark hair was tied back and his mouth curled up in the corners ever so slightly, as if trying to hide a smile. He seemed to be more elated about the fact that he was right and would get his chance to behead me than he was about any type of impending challenge of Angus’ authority, or the destruction of the island.

Mariah, an older but very
stately looking woman held up her hand in James’ direction. He fell silent. She turned her deep black eyes toward me. Her expression was formal but something in her voice was kind.

“Tell me young one,” she said, “why did you take the life of the innocent?” I was twenty four years old but in the last few days I felt as though I was being treated like an infant.

“I woke up and I was so sick.” I swallowed hard. My fate, I was certain, was already sealed. This was just a formality. “I felt like I had knives in my stomach and the voices were so loud. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I smelled the blood and all of a sudden it was all I could think about.”

“And when was the last time you fed before that?”

“I don’t ever remember feeding before that,” I said.

“She had not fed since the night of her transformation
four nights before,” Gavin said. “The only blood she had up until then was mine.”  That must have been what he meant when he said I was ‘quite the little eater’, although I had absolutely no memory of that at all.

The woman met Angus’ gaze.
“This child had not had a feeding at all and then smelled blood and went into frenzy. I don’t think it’s her fault.”

“Of course it’s her fault,” James said sounding like a spoiled teenager.
He was obviously in a position of some authority here, but just why I didn’t know. “She couldn’t control herself. We can’t have someone like that running around, it risks us all.”