The Brethren Of Tavish [Vampire Coven Book 1] (3 page)

“Was your hunt a success?” Mercy asked
politely.

“Yes, thankfully, my sweet,” her father replied.
Dante trailed his thumb gently down her cheek once more before clearing his
throat and going from father to leader. He then glanced about at all
thirty-nine of his family members who had his rapt attention. When Dante, their
ice leader spoke, the dwellers listened. “There will be no hunting for a month.
No one is to go outside for any reason. We will take turns at the time
counting.”

Thirty-one people were chosen to count. Mercy
was grateful she wasn’t one of them. All day the person sat alone, uninterrupted,
not even to eat, and calculated the seconds, then minutes then hours, carving
grooves into a long piece of ivory to mark the passing of time while the family
remained sequestered below the thick ice. You were forbidden to allow your mind
to wander during the tally. You were forbidden to think any thoughts except to
count out twenty-four hours. Mercy watched as her father settled into a far
corner on a mound of furs. He always took first count. Mercy loved him, she
respected him.

Mercy followed the others to a large back room
where they would flay the pieces of meat into small strips to ice over. Other
solid chunks would be left whole and would easily freeze in roast-sized pieces
that could be thawed later and skewered over a fire. Walrus tusks and other
ivory, tooth and bone made up their tools. Blubber stored in bone bowls with
dried seaweed wicks gave them ample light. When grouped together there was much
camaraderie and laughter. It was a cold life with little touching, and yet much
love through words, and it was all Mercy knew.

* * * *

Tavish took the great beast’s head into his
hands. The animal dwarfed him. The polar bear growled and grunted a series of
noises to her master. Both beast and vampire had the clear white eyes when they
communicated. Tavish listened attentively.

Humans, Master.

Tavish nodded while listening. Finally his eyes
settled back into light blue, and his black-and-white vision faded. Tavish
looked at the others in the room. Nineteen strong male vampires gazed back with
rapt attention. Twenty more were left behind at their coven far to the south,
to guard their assets and wait for the hunting party to return.

As leader of the coven, Tavish ruled all. He
had turned all. No one was allowed to turn anyone, except him. It was one of his
laws. He ruled The Brethren of Tavish. Many of his men had been with him for
thousands of years. Only the biggest and strongest and most loyal were chosen
for his line. Tavish had gained the respect and fear of the other covens. He
had come a long way from the alone, frightened vampire he once was. He placed
an affectionate hand on Ursus, his polar bear friend—his very first best
friend. She had been a big part of the reason he was so successful. She was the
only female he had continued to love throughout the years.

“My friend here has done well,” Tavish said and
smiled. “She spotted a hunting pack and trailed them back to their iceberg.
There was a small scent of women. They are deep inside the ice. They will be
hard to find.”

“Ursus can help,” one man said.

When he stepped forward, Tavish gazed at him
with fondness. Laken was the first human Tavish had turned. Both men looked so
much alike they could be mistaken for brothers. Like Tavish, Laken had
shoulder-length, thick, dark hair. He also had pale blue eyes. Their builds
were identical, huge,
muscular
. Tavish had first spotted
Laken hunting his Ursus.

Tavish had been tempted to rip the man’s throat
out. Instead, he had watched as the hunter became the hunted. It was amusing
how Ursus had turned the tables. The look of shocked disbelief on the man’s
face had been priceless when she was suddenly behind him, slicing his back.
Tavish had allowed Ursus to maul him. She had enjoyed the play. The man was
strong and hadn’t succumbed quickly. He even managed to run a few times as
Ursus toyed with him in a game of cat and mouse.

Tavish had admired the man’s strength and will
to live. When the man lay bleeding and helpless, Tavish ceased Ursus’ assault.
Laken hadn’t begged for help, he knew immediately what Tavish was when Tavish
had flown to him. Tavish had summed him up and offered him a choice, die or
offer him undying fealty. Laken swore on his life he would follow him into
death. Tavish had laughed at the irony of the words. They became fast friends
and even Ursus learned to enjoy Laken’s company.

“Ursus will be a great help; she always is. But
we must move carefully. We all know men have murdered their own women and
children to keep us from them. If they are cornered, we could lose a valuable
breeder female. No, this will take some deep thought or we will be the ones to
suffer the loss.”

“Was Ursus spotted?”

“Unfortunately, Rhett,
yes.”

Tavish noted the sly look on Laken’s face.
“What are you thinking?” Tavish asked.

“Oh how I crave foreign virgin blood,” Laken said
and grinned.

“So do
I
,” another
replied.

“As do we all, Ryker,” Tavish said. “Tonight we
go hunting.”

The men cheered. Tavish motioned Ursus forward
from a large cave the vampires were in. Furs were piled high for comfort.
Flasks of synthetic blood hung from sharp rocks. The contents were mostly
unpalatable, but it didn’t freeze in the extreme temperature and was construed
a necessary evil. The modern day vampire trail mix. The cave was the place they
stayed when they hunted. If their hunt was a success, Tavish and his vampires
would take their prey back to a place where human women could roam nude without
fear of freezing. Only the strongest human men were allowed to breed with the
women they captured. Tavish wanted only healthy offspring to feed his coven.

Tavish and his men took flight into the sky. A
blizzard raged all around them. Once cornered, there would be no escape for the
paltry humans. They would be trapped by vampire or snow. The vampires would
make certain the humans were all accounted for before striking. Tavish wanted
no daggers to find human female flesh. Tavish wanted all the females. He hoped
there were women of childbearing years. He hoped for strong young men who would
not whimper or cower at their feet; if so, they would be given to his men for
sport. Though somewhat more mildly tempered with age, there was one rage in
Tavish that had yet to be forgiven. He hated human males who weakly attacked
from behind, those without courage, the stealers of his family, his father and
mother. Tavish wouldn’t make the same mistake. He knew enough not to turn his
back on a simpering human male. If one was found amidst the bunch, his men
would make short work of him.

Tavish needed no son to carry on his line. It
was true all of the men of his coven shared blood ties once bitten, but they
had not been chosen as babes. These men were brothers. He had no desire to
watch a child of his heart perish to famine—or anything else. No son of his
would wander alone and afraid if Tavish were to be killed. There was no need to
turn a woman. They lived only to breed. When they were used up they were
useless to him.

There had not been a woman born in his
thousands of years that had turned Tavish’s head for more than a short time.
Tavish doubted there ever would be. To love was to lose.

Chapter 2

By the light of an oil-filled bowl, Mercy sat
hunched over a tattered book filled with short stories. She had read it
thousands of times. Each one was engraved on her memory. The one story was
published right before the ice age, one of the last. It was about the end of
time. Tornadoes and earthquakes rocked the earth. A tidal wave, named a
tsunami, bombarded coastlines. The author explained these events in graphic
detail. In some areas it grew so cold so fast people froze instantly. In
others, the temperature rose so high fish boiled in ponds.

The human race faced extinction in this story;
they needed to learn to adapt to survive. How ironic. Almost three hundred
years later and they were facing extinction again, but it wasn’t due to weather
conditions. The people in the story were survivalists.
Trailblazers.
They chose to live, to fight. Their survival seemed as tenacious as Mercy’s and
her
family’s
. You could no more battle a vampire than
stop a tornado. Where would you run from a massive wave? Marcy wondered if an
iceberg could stop a wall of water.

Mercy blew out the wick and set the oil bowl to
the side so it wouldn’t spill by accident. She lay back in her bed of furs. The
interior of the ice cave was cool. It had to be cold to keep the ice from
thawing. More importantly, it needed to be chilly to keep the vampires from
discovering warmth. Mercy was used to the cold; all she knew was cold. In her
story there was warmth; she wondered what it would be like to be warm. Mercy
tucked the book under her leather pillow. It was a gift from her mother, given
to her by her mother and so on. The story of survival weighed heavily with her
on this night.

Mercy couldn’t sleep. The ice crackled and
popped. It was a familiar sound, a soothing sound.
But not on
this night.
In the far corner, her father was little more than halfway
through his day of counting. When Mercy first crept into her furs, she noted a
series of smaller notches and fifteen longer scratch marks on the ivory walrus
tusk her father held. Now there were two more long scratches. Tap, tap, tap,
onto the stone before him went the counting device with a continuous flick of
his wrist. It was an uninterrupted sound they would hear for the next thirty
one days.

Rolling over did no good. Mercy tried burrowing
deeper into the warmth of her bedding. There was something she couldn’t put her
finger on.
Something that made her rest uneasy.
Looking over at the wide-eyed stare of her mother across the ice cave, Mercy
knew her mother felt it too. Evil was in the air. In the morning, a new tunnel
would be carved and another home would be dug out. Perhaps after the counting
period, her father might even risk a move to a new iceberg, though Mercy was
told their last move was twenty years ago and she remembered nothing of it.

Moving was difficult when you created each new
home carved within the solid ice. It could also be dangerous. Depending on the
temperature, outside crevices could form overnight. A few had fallen victim to
a glacial whim and found themselves doomed in their bedrolls when the ice
beneath them cracked open and split. Already the people’s grip on life was
tenacious at best.

Mercy smiled when next she looked over at her
mother and saw the words
I love you
on her lips. She mouthed the words back and cuddled her fur tight envisioning a
hug to go with the words, or even a light kiss to her forehead. A shrill scream
had everyone on their feet. Another blood curdling scream echoed. Mercy’s
breath caught. She could see her father; the ivory he had been concentrating
all of his focus on bounced onto the ground, the tip embedded into the ice near
the fur he had sat on. His eyes were wide with horror.

Mercy locked her gaze upon her father. The man
she loved more than anyone in the world besides her dearest mother. He was her
rock, her hero. If he was scared, they were truly doomed. For a second, Mercy
could hear her heart pounding in her ears. From the corner of her eye, she saw
a blur capture Jarrod. Jarrod was kicking and screaming from high in the air
held by his throat like a leather rag doll. A man-beast with glowing yellow
eyes was smiling evilly at Jarrod. He pulled his lips back to expose inch-long
fangs.
A beast, a vampire.
They were all going to die.

Mercy heard her mother cry out. Horrified,
Mercy watched as her father pulled his ivory dagger from her mother’s breast.
Before her mother could sink to the ground Mercy’s father was running towards
her. The ivory in his hand was sullied with blood. Mercy knew her father was
going to kill her. She had always known if ever they were found out, he would
never let her fall into enemy hands. Mercy swayed, blood rushed to her head.
The pounding of her heart filled her ears. She should stand there and wait for
him. She should trust him, even though every fiber of her being was screaming
for escape, for life.

At the last moment, she mouthed her words,
“I’m so sorry, Daddy.”
He looked
terrified as she bolted away from him. Mercy heard him screaming for her to
come back, but in that moment
he
had
become the madness. She would rather be killed by murdering beasts than her own
father. The betrayal would be too much.

Mercy ran faster than she ever had in her life.
She slid down the long narrow tunnel they had been working on. The territory
was new and unexplored with natural tunnels veering off left and right. Farther
Mercy went, listening to the horrible screams of her loved ones. It was dark,
little light guided her way and Mercy slipped when her furred boot hit water.
Screaming she fell head first towards an abyss. Down a shoot of rushing water
she tumbled wondering if she would drown in the frigid ocean.

Gasping for breath, Mercy was tossed sideways
down a new loop of water slide. Her body was whipped around and around, careening
in circles as she turned over. Faster she went, up one icy hill down another.
For a heart stopping moment she was airborne then hit the ground again. She
heard the great ice crack and pop. A thundering echoed behind her. Mercy spun
and crashed feet first into a solid ice wall. She groaned from the impact
feeling it all the way up her bones as her jaw snapped together harshly in a
sold clack. She was soaked, frozen, but unhurt.