“No!” I screamed. He looked up surprised to see me. Growling like an animal, his eyes blackened, he grunted and prepared to strike at the woman’s neck again. I couldn’t let that happen. I took a run and tackled him to the ground. We rolled together five or six times but I had succeeded in getting him away from the woman. She was on the ground behind us totally unconscious, thank god.
“What are you doing?” I didn’t get a verbal response, only more growling. He quickly got to his feet and crouched down, knees bent readying himself to spring forward. He took off in a sudden burst and I braced myself as he came at me with all his force. I tried to hold myself up, but was knocked to the ground by his unusually heavy frame. Gavin was strong, no doubt, but right now he had an incredible amount of strength, more so than usual.
We struggled and he ended up pinning me to the earth with my arms over above me. Then, holding me down with one hand, he produced a stake with the other. Grinning now and showing his fangs, he growled once more, and raised the stake high over his head. Before he had a chance to strike my heart I thought quickly and rammed my head against his, bringing our skulls together with a massive crack. I felt the bone in my forehead snap and give way, splintering underneath my skin for the second time that day.
Luckily, I hit him hard enough to stun him and he dropped the stake, falling on top of me. I pushed him off and took possession of the stake for myself, holding it up to show that if he came near me I’d kill him.
He got to his feet, growled again and took off like an injured animal. I ran after him but he was nowhere to be found. It was like he had vanished into thin air. Not knowing what to do I went back to the lighthouse to wait for Ian. I was shaking and gripping the stake so tightly I thought it would be crushed to splinters before he showed up.
“Where were you?” I screamed when he finally showed up.
“Shh, I was down by the canal bridge. Ran into some high school kids drinking under there. Easy pickings.” I was shaking wildly, trying to hold it together and find the words to tell him what had happened. “What the fuck?” he said finally noticing the stake.
“He tried to kill me,” was all I could get out.
“Oh my god, Rachel are you alright?” Gently Ian pried the stake out of my hand and put his arms around me. I couldn’t hold it in any longer and sobbed openly into his chest.
“He tried to kill me,” I choked out again.
“It’s ok. I’ve got you. You’re safe now.” Ian locked his arms around me rocking me back and forth, squeezing me tightly and planting small kisses on top of my head. “Thank god you’re alright.”
“Why is he doing this? He always said how much he loved me, how he’d protect me…”
“I don’t know why,” he said his voice hardening, “and right now I don’t really care.” He pulled me away from him and looked me in the eye. “I know it’s hard for you to accept, but Rach, he’s dangerous. In the next few days and weeks hard decisions will have to be made. You need to be strong.” I nodded continuing to cry as he pulled me back into him. As much as I didn’t want to admit it I was beginning to think that perhaps they were right.
“I wish this wasn’t happening.”
“I know,” he said, his hands running up and down my back. “But sometimes we have to accept things we don’t want to. When you’re as old as I am you realize these things are part of life. It’s the reality of what we are.”
He walked me back to the truck opening the door for me and gently helping me into the cab. I sat in stunned silence all the way home. My entire world was collapsing down around me. The man I loved more than anything in this world, the man who had been so obsessed with securing my safety just a short time ago had almost murdered me. He had looked me straight in the eye and raised a stake, aiming for my heart. He was ready to end me and break the blood bond he had so desperately held on to. It didn’t make sense.
Ian parked and we sat in the yard for a long moment. “You shouldn’t be alone right now,” he said brushing the hair away from my eyes. “He might come back here.” The thought of that scared the hell out of me.
“Would you stay?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. We went inside and I put the guest room in order then went to my room. As I sat down on the bed I stared at the wedding picture that sat on the nightstand for a long time. I picked it up and looked at the man I loved, the man who swore to love and protect me, the man who had just tried to kill me. I didn’t even think of him as the same person anymore. I stroked the silver frame and stared at the image that seemed like it had been taken a hundred years ago.
A rage began in the pit of my stomach and rose rapidly, fiercely, breaking the surface like an unexpected tide. I threw the frame as hard as I could against the wall sending shards of glass everywhere, screaming in fury as I did so. For the first time in a long time, I felt that old familiar feeling of being truly and completely alone.
Chapter Thirteen
“We’ve been called to the sanctuary,” Ian announced when I emerged from the bedroom the next morning. After a night spent pacing the room, destroying anything that wasn’t nailed down this was not welcome news. My blind rage had subsided into a low level anger but I felt as though I was just barely hanging on by my fingernails, white knuckling my wrath and fear into their appropriate place. I knew I hadn’t told Angus about Gavin’s return to violence, but I figured Holly had probably felt it was her duty to do so after last night. I had heard Ian on the phone telling her all about it in between my tearing the room apart.
“When?” I asked.
“Tonight,” he said, handing me a cup of coffee. I took it and sat at the kitchen table sipping mindlessly.
“I know you had an awful night, Rach. Hang in there ok?” he said, placing his hand on my shoulder as he passed me on his way to the door. “I’m going to do some more tracking. If we could get him today it might make this whole process go smoother tonight.” I knew there was some hidden message behind that statement I was supposed to grasp, but I just nodded and kept myself in denial for now.
“Where are you going to track?”
“I’m going back to the park,” he said.
“Makes sense I guess.” I got up and poured the rest of the coffee down the sink and then went back into the wreckage that was my bedroom leaving Ian standing there. A few moments later I heard the door close and the truck’s engine turn over. There was no energy or motivation to do anything other than lay there on the bed, which was really the only thing I hadn’t destroyed, and wonder why this was all happening.
Out of desperation I decided to try reaching out one more time. Maybe this time I’d get some piece of information, some clue or image that would help us all to make sense of this. I cleared my mind and focused. Calling to him made my anger dissipate into grief once again. I wanted my husband back. I wanted to hold him, to touch him, to lay in his arms and have him look at me in the way that nobody else ever had or would. He had made me feel so safe and I longed to feel that way again.
It was no good, all I got in response was darkness. It was like his consciousness wasn’t there any longer. The door to his mind had been closed. I didn’t know if it was because he was shutting me out, or if our connection had simply ceased to exist. It was bound to happen sometime after all, and if that was the case it was certainly lousy timing.
I thought of all the plans we’d made over the last few months. Gavin was going to sell the business his father had given him and we were going to travel. When I was full blooded enough we were going to try for a baby. I was still too human for that to work but in the next year or two that would change. I’d be able to conceive his child after my transformation was complete, and he’d been so excited at the thought of it. Tears were stinging my eyes now. I had pictured our children so many times. Little ones perhaps with dark hair like mine and blue eyes like his, or his beautiful curly blonde hair and bright smile running around our little house. We had talked about it and decided on four or five. That was a
compromise as I had talked him down from double digits. Gavin wanted to convert this house into a bigger one and fill it full of noise and children and animals. He had spent a lot of years cooped up in the sanctuary and wanted to make up for lost time. He talked almost incessantly at times about what we would name them, where they’d go to school, what they’d be like. At night we’d lay in bed and with his arms around me tell me all about the love he already had for the children who didn’t yet even exist and I loved him all the more for it. We were so excited at the thought of it all. It would be hard to let that go.
Ian returned just before dark. “No luck,” he said. Gavin was still out there somewhere. Part of me was relieved Ian hadn’t found him and killed him, but part of me was still scared shitless that he’d come back and finish what he tried to do last night.
He sat me down at the kitchen table like a child who has to have something horrible explained to them to soften the blow of whatever it is. “You know what’s coming tonight don’t you?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know if want to know.
“I know you don’t. None of us do, but it’s going to be especially hard on you. You’re newly born and need your maker. You need him more than any of us, but I want you to know that we’re all here for you. My parents, Holly, Alexander soon and…me.” He lowered his eyes. “I’m here for whatever you need Rach. I’m just…I’m here ok? I’ll help you any way I can. I might not be able to help my brother, but I can protect the one thing he valued more than anything, more than his own life even,” he reached out to touch my face, wiping away a tear as it slid down my cheek, “and that’s you,” he whispered.
“Thank you,” I said. I meant it. Being alone under a threat like this was not something I wanted to face. Ian was here, and I was grateful.
It was dark now and time to go, we made the long walk together in silence and arrived outside the grounds of the sanctuary around the same time Holly and Daniel did. They didn’t say anything to us; we all just exchanged a sad look. It felt like we were about to attend a funeral, and in a sense, we were.
We closed our eyes at the same time and gripped our pendants. I had not taken mine off since the night Gavin put it back on me inside my room at this place and I felt a twinge of sadness at that memory. I was scared and confused at the time but he was there to reassure me that I would be ok, and that he would protect me. And protect me he did. The first night I set foot on this ground the other clan members had been less than welcoming. I wished I could protect him now the way he had protected me that night. He was willing to throw himself in front of anyone who’d harm me, and there was a long list of those who wanted to, including his own brother.
Daniel pushed the large wooden door open and held it for all of us as we stepped inside. Gavin’s parents were waiting for us in the corridor. They looked like they had aged a hundred years since the night of our dinner at Holly’s, the last time Gavin had been himself. It pained me to see them this way. They had born and lost many children, but no matter how many there were, each one was unique and loved.
As we entered the council room Angus stood and embraced Gavin’s mother, and then Holly. He shook Ian and Daniel’s hand and then turned his attention to me. “I want you to know that no matter what happens here it’s no reflection on you. You still have the full support and protection of this clan, and myself.” I nodded. He hugged me close and planted a sweet fatherly kiss on my forehead. He was genuinely shaken and didn’t want any of this to be happening either.
Angus made his way to the head of the room as if his limbs were weighted down, shoulders slumped. “Please sit down,” he said to us. We all sat at the large wrought iron oval table in the center of the room. I placed my hands on it feeling the cool sharp metal and breathed deeply to steady myself. There was a smell in the air reminiscent of a combination of incense and dying flowers. Closing my eyes I tried to brace myself for what was to come as Ian closed his hand over mine for a moment in a gesture of comfort. When I met his face he forced a weak smile.
“We all know what brings us here.” Angus’ words were solemn and his normally rich baritone was subdued. “I have spoken to everyone here separately, with the exception of Rachel.” He fixed his eyes on me. “Do you have anything you want to say?”
“I don’t want him to die,” was the only thing I could come up with. “Isn’t there any way we can find him and bring him here? Is there no way to bring him back to what he was?”
“Child,” Angus said gently, “I’m afraid he is back to what he was. That’s why we’re here.”
“Angus has this ever happened before? To anyone else I mean? Isn’t there any other way? And he hasn’t actually killed an innocent.”
“But he would have last night if you hadn’t stopped him,” Ian said. I couldn’t argue with that. He was getting ready to open up that human’s neck the way he had with Nina.
“Technically you’re right Rachel, but I’m afraid someone will die if we don’t put all our resources into finding him now.” I lowered my head. “We’ll do our best to bring him here unharmed so we can at least get some answers. I can assure you of that.”
“Can’t you just...I don’t know, give it one more day?” I knew it was probably a futile attempt to ask, but I also knew that he’d have done the same for me. Gavin would beg for a million second chances if I were out there somewhere, sick and alone. No matter what awful thing I did I knew he’d never give up on me, and I owed him that same loyalty.
Angus’ face softened, “Well, perhaps we could...” Just then we were interrupted by a guard. Angus clenched his jaw and gave the interrupting vampire a cold hard stare. “What is it?”
“Eli Johnson is here to see you,” the guard said.
“Tell him I’ll see him when I’m finished here.”
“You’ll see me now,” an angry voice said from behind the guard. Eli was the leader of the native vampires on Chapel Island, the reservation that bordered on Soldiers Cove. He stormed in along with three other large vampires, all men. One was carrying the body of a young woman. “Do you see this?” he screamed.
Angus rose up from the table and went over to Eli. “What’s going on here?”
“What’s going on,” he said, “is that one of yours did this to one of mine.” Eli could barely contain his rage. He pointed his finger at me. “Her husband slaughtered this woman, an innocent.” He motioned to the vampire carrying the body, who unceremoniously dropped her on the table in front of me with a thud. Not just bitten or drained, she had been butchered. She was naked and had deep bite marks all over her body with chunks of flesh missing. Her stomach had been slashed open as well, and its contents now spilled out onto the table before us.
I backed away, horrified, and turned around. Eli seized my head, turning it back toward the gruesome sight forcing me to confront it. “Look!” he said. “This woman had hurt no one, and didn’t know our secrets. She was no threat to anybody. Now four children are left to grow up motherless.”
Ian stood up and bared his fangs in rage, “Take your hands off her.”
Angus moved quickly and got in between them. “Stop!” he said. “I’ll have no bloodshed in my sanctuary.” Eli finally let go of my head, I couldn’t turn away fast enough.
He changed his tone and spoke to Angus once more. “Angus, we have always had peace between our people, and you know we aren’t above reason, but if this happens again, that will be over. We’ve been friends and neighbours here for hundreds of years but if you don’t handle this, all that will end. I expect you to wake all your hunters and turn them loose on that murdering son of a bitch. You’ve shown him mercy in the past, but no more.”
Eli didn’t say another word, simply turned and headed for the door. The vampire who had been carrying the body picked her up once again, and they stormed out. Angus stood there for a moment and gathered himself, running his hands over his hair and wiping them on his shirt before making his way slowly back to his place. Everyone at the tab
le sat in stunned silence. Holly had her hands over her mouth, and Daniel had his arm around her. Gavin’s parents simply stared straight ahead. Ian grabbed my hand and held tightly, pulling his chair up to mine as close as he could as if having him near would make the next statement easier to bear.
“I’m sorry Rachel, all of you, but this leaves me no choice.” He turned to the guard, “I do officially declare that Gavin MacDonald is being hunted and should be executed at all costs...the order is to kill on sight,” he said. “Wake the hunters. The pursuit begins now.”
Chapter Fourteen
We all followed Angus down a dimly lit staircase that wound its way into the bowels of the sanctuary. Everyone was silent. So silent that the heaviness of it weighed down on all of us, crushing our souls like a twisted metal vice. No one spoke a word until we finally reached the bottom and a guard led us into a large room.
Ian pulled me aside before anything had a chance to happen. “Rachel it’s not necessary that we be here for this. Let me take you home.”
The Vampires of Soldiers Cove: One Crow Sorrow Page 8