The Vampires of Soldiers Cove (9 page)

Chapter Twelve

The blood was everywhere.
All over the sheets, floor and walls of the room. Three faces were staring down at me, faces that would have looked more at home on a rotting corpse than a living being.  Mutated and ghastly, their mouths opened wide in bloody snarls. I looked down at my body and saw that it had been ripped open. My skin was hanging in shreds on the white sheets, organs and entrails spilled everywhere as the smell of rotting human meat filled the air. The demons unhinged their distorted jaws and squealed with excitement.

I tried to move but they had unbelievable strength and pinned me down
with hands that were more like talons. One of them grabbed my arm and with jagged yellow teeth began to consume my flesh. Looking down at my ravaged body I wondered how I could still be alive. From across the room I saw a young man of no more than nineteen watching with amusement. He yelled a command in a language that I didn’t understand and the demons backed away.

Lining
the wall against the room they kept watch on me with their hanging skin falling in folds, their blackened eyes never leaving me. Then jumping up and down with high pitched squeals of delight they celebrated as the young man drew a sword. I opened my mouth to scream but sound wouldn’t come. 

The young man’s
lips drew back from his teeth revealing a set of fangs, and with swift precision he brought the sword down on my neck. The creatures took hold of my severed head without conscience and held it up by a bloody mass of knotted hair screaming with childlike glee.  The young vampire laughed.

I bolted upright in bed next to a still sleeping Gavin.
Feeling as though I was going to be sick I ran to the bathroom mirror to make sure that my head was still securely attached to my neck. The sharp sword that had sliced through me felt so real that for a few moments I wasn’t sure where the dream had ended and reality began.

The faces of the grotesque creatures flashed before me for a brief second in the mirror and I gasped.
Gavin stirred in the other room and within seconds he was next to me and spinning me around to face him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Just a bad dream,” I said. He pulled me closer into a hug, it felt good and I sunk into his broad chest willingly.

“What did you see?”

“It was crazy. I dreamed that someone took my head off with a sword. And there were these demons... I don’t know what they were. I don’t know, the whole thing was crazy.”

“It’s over
now,” he said hugging me closer.  “You’ll be stronger today now that you’ve fed.  You’ll have more control.  We need to begin working on the fire.”  I broke his embrace and turned away from him suddenly feeling awkward.

“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 Gavi
n 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.