Rachel looked as though she was flabbergasted at the use of the word. “Incident? Tonight’s incident? We pulled the bodies of twenty men out of the water last night. Would you care to explain about those incidents?”
“As I said, many of my daughters are still learning.”
“And committing murder as they do it,” Gavin retorted.
Zarah hung her head in shame. “I have no excuse to offer for their behavior, only my profound apologies.”
“Well, tell it to the satyrs,” he said.
“They appear to have left. But if you would be so kind as to call them back I’d be happy to do so.”
Rachel said, “I don’t think they’ll be coming anywhere near the pond for a while. Zarah, with all due respect, we were on our way here tonight to see if we could broker a peace. Would you consider moving on?”
Zarah looked as if she had been greatly insulted. Her eyes widened and she spread her hands outward in a gesture of disbelief. “This has been our home for hundreds of years. Perhaps the satyrs would like to move on. Perhaps the vampires would like to move on. And I’m sure the indigenous people of this area would be most happy if the white man were to move on. I understand we’ve created an inconvenience, and for that we are regretful, but you know not what you ask.”
For the first time Gavin noticed that several of the women were visibly pregnant and suddenly his mind filled with questions. Would these children be satyrs or naiads? Did they hold some kind of information that could possibly help them with Ryan? He had to know.
“You kill them when you mate with them, is that correct?”
Zarah lowered her eyes. “If they cannot tolerate the water they die in the process. But, of course,” she said, looking at him seductively now, “you yourself would not be prone to that. A vampire can tolerate the water and would make a most suitable mate. You would surely survive. Were you interested in any of my young daughters?” Several of the non-pregnant ones batted their eyelashes and stood seductively as if on cue.
Rachel answered for him before he had a chance. “No! He most definitely is not.”
“Ah,” Zarah said, seeming to understand. “I see you are already mated. Very well. Do you have any other candidates you’d be willing to offer us? Perhaps if we had some vampire mates we wouldn’t have to succumb to the satyrs. They would have to come willingly though. Satyrs are strong but mentally weak when it comes to mating, that’s why they’re so easy to catch. They have the same drive we do.”
Ironic. The satyrs were dying from the very same instinct that drove them to capture women and have them bare children for the tribe. “Is it some kind of pheromone that works on them?”
Zarah smiled. Gavin noticed how beautiful she was. A woman like that, had she been human, would certainly not have needed any type of trick to catch a man. “Yes, it is,” she confessed. “It works on humans too. Vampires, no. So you are safe.”
“Do you realize you’ve all but wiped out their tribe? They were a small group anyway and now they are down to only six. Three of which are not able to mate anymore.”
“How unfortunate,” she said without emotion.
“Not only that but the children the dead ones had fathered are as good as dead since their fathers won’t be here to take possession of them when their time to turn comes.”
“We lose many children ourselves. Only the strongest survive. That’s why it’s imperative that we all mate.”
“You do? How so?”
“Only the females we birth will survive. All our own male children will die and we can only mate when we awaken every few hundred years. I appreciate your grief, but surely you can understand our situation. We’ve done nothing any worse than any other non-human creature has to do to survive. Tell me, vampire, how many have died in the name of filling your own needs? Humans are food to you, are they not?”
“We don’t have to kill them to feed,” he said.
“Don’t have to, no. Want to? I suspect perhaps that is the case sometimes. Don’t tell me you’ve never taken a life.”
Neither he nor Rachel could lay claim to that, as much as he wished they could. Both of them had taken lives, both human and non-human, for reasons other than survival. Perhaps they were actually worse than the naiads.”
“No matter,” Rachel said. “We need to focus on the situation here and now. We need to figure out what we can do to all live in peace together.”
With a large sigh, Zarah rolled her eyes and said, “Very well. Tell Angus to come forth tomorrow night and we’ll discuss it. Until then…”
“My name is Rachel. I am the leader of the vampire clan that lives on this land. It’s me you’ll be talking to.”
Zarah smiled, and more than that, she seemed to be stifling a laugh. Rachel glared in return. “You? Well, my apologies then. I didn’t realize Angus had moved on.”
“He didn’t. I killed him.”
Whatever humor Zarah had found in Rachel’s leadership suddenly ran away from her face and her features took on an appearance of fear. “I see. What do you propose?”
Rachel was about to speak when Gavin grabbed her by the elbow and took her a few steps away until they were hidden by a tree. He whispered, “Before we do anything that might be permanent here, we need to think of Ryan.”
“Think of Ryan?”
“Yes. These creatures mate with satyrs and their children don’t turn into them. They might know something we don’t.”
“Maybe. Or it might have to do with the fact that only their females survive and the males, who would be satyrs, die off. There are no female satyrs and no male naiads.”
Gavin hadn’t thought of that and his heart dropped in disappointment. “Ok, maybe you’re right, but still, if they have any information, any information at all that could help, we can’t just run them off.”
“It’s what the clan expects me to do. It’s what the satyrs expect me to do. How would I explain that I didn’t?”
Gavin felt himself becoming angry. How could she possibly put the expectations placed on her by two different groups above the survival of her own son? He had to get her to see it his way. “Be a leader!” he said. “Angus answered to no one. You shouldn’t either. Whatever decision you make everyone has to abide by.”
Rachel backed up a step, placing her hands up and putting a tiny bit of distance between them. “Ok. Calm down. I hear what you’re saying, but I can’t start a war here. I have to avoid it if it can be done at all.”
“And if it can’t be avoided?”
Rachel thought for a moment, her shoulders slumped as the weight of the decision bared down on her. “I have an idea,” she said.
Turning back toward the group of waiting naiads, Rachel stalked as close as she could to the edge of the frozen pond. “How long until you have to sleep again?” she asked.
All of my daughters need to have a chance to mate, and then birth their young. Some have already done so,” she said, motioning to a young naiad with an infant peacefully suckling at her breast. “But most have not. It will maybe be a year and a half. Our situation is delicate at the moment.”
“All right. I can appreciate that. I’m a mother myself. Can I get your assurance that you will not attempt to mate with anyone, satyr or human, while we have talks?”
“Talks? Talks of what? That seems like a pointless waste of time.”
“Please, Zarah. For the sake of your children, and mine, let’s see if we can come up with a different solution than a possibly violent one. Perhaps I can arrange some volunteers.”
“For mating?”
“Yes. How many would you need?”
Zarah thought for a moment. “At least eight or ten to keep the bloodline strong. It’s preferable that each child have a different father.”
“I see. How about this. I will meet with our males and see if anyone would be willing, and until then you and your group will simply do nothing.”
“It’s really the only way to satisfy you for now, isn’t it?” Z
arah asked.
“Yes.”
“Very well. Come back with your males or don’t come back at all. If you can’t find them, we start mating again.”
Gavin knew there was no way Rachel would willingly agree to that, but she smiled at Zarah and placated her anyway. “Agreed.”
Without another word or any other pleasantries, Zarah and her group disappeared beneath the ice one by one. The sound of bodies hitting the water and then bubbles breaking the surface as they descended echoed over and over until they were all gone. Then Gavin and Rachel began their walk toward home.
“I hope I did the right thing,” she said, just before walking through the treeline into the backyard.
“It’s never the wrong thing to take some time and think about things.”
“You really think they might have some piece of information that could help us with Ryan?”
“There’s no way to know for sure. But I think if we just drove them away without so much as looking into it we might regret it.”
“You know, my aunt had a great love of lottery tickets.”
“So did I when I was human. Funny, it went away after I was turned.”
“Same here. Not that I bought them a lot, but once in a while I did. But my aunt always used to say that if she didn’t buy a ticket and someone close by won it that she’d regret it.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, she never did win. But I’m sure she spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars making the attempt.”
“I’m not sure what you’re driving at.”
“Sometimes, Gavin, you pay a lot to learn a lesson. I hope that’s not what I’ve done here.”
He stopped her, taking her by the shoulders and then putting his arms around her. “I’m sure it isn’t.”
“Good. I have to call a meeting for night after tomorrow. Tomorrow I have to feed the orphans at our sanctuary.”
Gavin nodded. “You’ll have to say goodbye to Ryan in the morning.”
“I’m going to sleep in his bed tonight,” she said, pulling away.
“Rachel, I…”
“Goodnight Gavin.”
Rachel walked into the house and headed up the stairs before he had a chance to say anything else. Although she hadn’t told him outright, he knew she was angry with him. He’d pressured her to do something she wasn’t entirely comfortable doing and as such, she wasn’t speaking to him. At least not for the night.
Gavin entered the house behind her and came face to face with Holly, who was sitting at the table drinking a cup of tea.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“No, but it will be.” And he was determined that it would be. After changing out of his wet clothes he settled in to a long night of searching the far reaches of the internet, again, to see if it could yield any answers for their son.
Chapter Eight
After a few hours of fruitless searching, again, Gavin had turned his research to niads, hoping to find something in that search that might lead to new information in regards to Ryan. No luck there either. Holly and Duncan had left him alone to his pursuit as the girls both slumbered upstairs in the same bedroom. The two cousins were close, sometimes even occupying the same crib and crying to be put together in the night. Ruby and Jade were becoming more like sisters and Gavin was grateful that his little girl was too young to really miss her mother in the same way Ryan was.
At the usual time Ryan padded down the stairs. “You want some breakfast, buddy?”
He shook his head no without giving a verbal answer. Gavin shut his laptop down and put it aside. “What’s the matter?”
“Mom said she’s leaving again to go back to Halifax. I asked her if I could come. She said no.”
“Oh.” Gavin put his arm around the boy, who looked like he was getting ready to begin sobbing. “Sorry buddy. Mommy has to do this to get better. You’d be bored anyway. Trust me, you have more fun in school than you would hanging around a boring old hospital all day. There’s no kids your age and nothing to do.”
“Daddy, is mommy going to die?”
Gavin was taken aback by the bluntness of Ryan’s question. In telling the community that she had cancer and was running back and forth for an experimental treatment it hadn’t occurred to him that he might have heard certain talk at school. He had been so preoccupied with Rachel herself that he hadn’t taken the time to fully explain things to Ryan in a way that wouldn’t alarm him. Now he was kicking himself.
“No, buddy. Of course not. She’s going to be just fine.” Gavin felt something stabbing him in the pit of his stomach as he said the words. He had no way to know if that was true, but he certainly couldn’t share his fear that one of the orphans would kill his wife with his son. He swallowed hard and continued on. “Don’t you worry about a thing, Ryan. I know you miss her and she misses you too when she’s away, but she’ll be back for good soon and all better. Then we’ll be able to do the things we’ve always done. Ok?”
After a moment’s hesitation in which he looked at Gavin, trying to discern whether or not he was telling the truth, Ryan said, “Ok.”
“Good. How about that cereal before you go off to get dressed?”
Ryan rubbed his sleepy eyes and nodded yes this time. Then Gavin turned on the TV and Ryan watched a cartoon as Gavin went into the kitchen to get the cereal. After giving it to Ryan, who ate it on the couch and watched his show, Gavin went back into the kitchen to pack his lunch. He hadn’t performed this simple task in so long that it took him twice the time it normally would. Holly had reorganized their kitchen somewhat and now he was looking for things he normally didn’t have to. Halfway through the process Rachel came in and poured herself a cup of coffee.
“Did you sleep?” he asked.
“Yeah. Willed myself. You?”
“No,” was all he had to say. She knew immediately what he had spent his time doing.
“Did you find anything new?”
“No, nothing. I even read about niads but didn’t turn anything up there either.”
“Guess that’s the price you pay when you play the lottery.”
Gavin felt his back go up for a moment as the tension between them made itself known. “I guess so,” he huffed.
Rachel took a small sip of her coffee and poured the rest down the sink. “Tastes like ashes,” she said, and went in the living room to sit next to Ryan as he finished his breakfast.
A few minutes later Ryan came in the kitchen and put his bowl in the sink. “Can you drive me to school today, daddy?”
“I guess so. If that’s what you want. You don’t want to take the bus?”
Rachel came in and stood against the kitchen door with her arms folded. Even when she was pissed at him she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. “Yeah. I want you and mommy to take me today.”
“Mommy?” he said, looking at Rachel. “What do you say?”
Ryan turned to look at her. She smiled. “Sure. I guess that would be ok.”
“Go upstairs and get ready,” he said. And with that Ryan bounded up the stairs, leaving Rachel standing there, staring at Gavin. For a moment he was scared to approach her, but then took the chance and walked toward her, opening his arms. She hesitated but then slipped into them, like always.
“I can’t stay mad at you,” she said.
“Thank god.”
“Ow.”
“What’s the matter?” Gavin held Rachel out in front of him. She was squinting.
She turned away from the window where the bright winter sun was glinting in sparkles against the newly fallen layer of snow. “My eyes. Any idea where those Prada glasses ever got to? It hurts to see the light for some reason.”
Gavin suspected it had something to do with how malnourished she was these days. Even though she looked better than she had, it was still taking its toll on her. Gavin opened one of the kitchen drawers and rummaged around until he found what he was looking for. “Here they are,” he said.
Rache
l slipped them on. “That’s better.”
Just then Duncan entered the kitchen. “Eyes bothering you?”
“Yeah. The light was burning them until I put on the glasses.”
“Just be grateful you have them. Back when I was turned Prada hadn’t been invented yet. We had to hide during the day and come out to eat at night.”
“I guess that’s where the whole legend came from,” Rachel said.
“Most likely. Sunlight doesn’t make you dead, it just makes you wish you were.”
“Tell me about it,” a voice from behind them said. Standing there was Leiv and Alexander. Leiv walked around Rachel, totally ignoring her like she didn’t even exist and went to the dishwasher, opening it up. “Has anyone seen my owl mug?”
“In the other cupboard,” Holly said, entering the kitchen now as well.
Leiv opened the cupboard Holly had pointed to and retrieved his owl mug, filling it with cold water from the fridge instead of coffee. “Leiv, I…” Rachel began.
Before she could finish her thought Leiv turned sharply and, for the first time since they’d arrived home, looked her straight in the eye. “Going to feed the orphans today are you?”
“Yes, but, Leiv we need to talk.”
Then, as quickly as he’d turned to look her in the eye, he turned his back on her and exited the room. “Have a good day,” he said, only sort of looking back over his shoulder.
Rachel looked as if she was about to cry and Gavin moved closer to her in hopes that he could put his arms around her or offer her a word of comfort. “No. Don’t,” she said, grabbing her jacket from where she’d slung it over one of the kitchen chairs the night before. “I’m going to wait in the car.”
The door slammed on her way out and Gavin stood at the kitchen window for a moment staring out at the car. He knew she wanted to be alone but it was killing him not to be with her when she was hurting. It was partly because he loved her so much, but also partly because of the left over residue of the blood bond syndrome he had been victim of since Rachel’s turning. Holly’s hand found her way to his shoulder and now she was comforting him. When he turned around everyone had left the room except for the two of them.
The Vampires of Soldiers Cove: Sacrificial Children Page 5