by Milo Spires
The homeless used to be easy prey for most, and the bodies were always easily disposed off where they would never be found. Rumor had it that the coven responsible for the atrocities were so furious with the homeless being too infected to feed from that they decided to break the age-old rule and attack anyone they saw. The slaughter was publicised; the local CCTV footage in the town center had caught it all and it was then broadcast live on television sets across the world for everyone to see.
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Kaine flew down and landed in a dark street outside St Dunstan’s church before he tucked in his wings behind himself and started walking. At the end of the road, he turned left into the heart of London’s East End.
Immediately he was confronted with crowds of scummy people everywhere, some begging, some fighting. Police whistles sounding from side streets, along with the occasional gunshots. London was again a very unsafe place for most, and he couldn’t help but laugh to himself as his shoulder thudded into a big bloke. The man spun around immediately and started eyeing him up for size. He ignored the fool and carried on.
‘Watch yourself, you freak!’ the bloke shouted out behind him. It made Kaine smile as he continued ahead brushing past more people. How lucky that guy had just been, he thought. Had it been another vampire and not him, the man’s jugular would have been severed, spraying everywhere like a fountain of red.
As he got to the end of the road, he could see the next one was in complete darkness except for two street lamps that were barely flickering. It looked like they were desperately trying to avoid the same fate that the other lifeless lamps had just succumbed to.
His primal senses quickly homed in on the silhouettes of two men who were on the opposite side of the pavement some way ahead. The taller of the two seemed to be making demands whilst the smaller one was denying his requests. As he got nearer it was clear that it wasn’t just an argument at all--it was actually a street robbery. Then suddenly, like a flash of an eye, a blade reflecting the moonlight appeared and darted fast into the smaller man’s chest. He staggered for a second clutching at the wound, then his knees buckled beneath him and he crashed to the ground. Instantly his attacker set about him. Standing on his wrists, pinning them to the ground, before rifling through the dying mans pockets.
Surreptitiously gliding undetected towards his prey, Kaine flew millimeters above the ground, watching for the possibility of other people. With no one around to witness it, he grabbed the robber by his neck. Spinning him around, he slammed him backwards extremely hard into the wall. Blood from the back of the man’s head began squirting out fast as his skull cracked open from the impact. The thick dark red liquid ran down the wall, chasing different pathways, as it headed for the ground. Deep shock and terror flashed across the man’s eyes as he blinked rapidly, desperately trying to stay awake. Kaine’s fingers tightened on the man’s throat as he attempted to scream. He could feel the gentle ripple between his fingers as the man’s cries for help tried to come out. His efforts to make the pathetic sound were futile though, because his throat was squashed and his windpipe was flattened as if a car had just driven over it moments before. Kaine released the pressure slightly, just enough to allow him to breath in a couple of gulps of air. He needed him to stay awake just long enough to experience the more violent pain to come.
In traditional vampire style and with his face eerily lit in the luminescent glow of the moon above, he leant forward and pretended to bite his prey’s throat. The man thrashed around desperately and then froze, as urine squirted out from his trouser leg.
Kaine burst out laughing and pulled back without even breaking the skin. He stared into the man’s eyes and said,
‘I have never drunk human’s blood. It’s not like deer’s blood, which is clean and healthy. Your blood is filthy and impure, and it sickens me. Give my regards to Lucifer though, won’t you?’ he said, as he punched his fist so hard into the robber that it burst through the man’s sternum and flattened his heart. Looking up into Kaine’s eyes, extreme terror raced through the windows to his soul for but a second before he slumped forward, dead. Kaine dropped the body and walked on into a side street.
As he walked he began to think about the meeting he was just about to attend, and hoped he would be asked to head any attack if there was one against the Scottish coven. He had met them in the past and hated their leader Angus.
They must pay for their actions, he thought.
Coming up to the corner, he could see a street called Petty Whales, and just past that in the distance was the Tower of London itself. He used to love to visit the Tower by foot at night; the lights used to be so beautiful. Now, though, it looked a whole lot different on the outside. There was rubbish everywhere, and the once-beautiful, historically clean brick walls of the castle had graffiti covering parts of them. One message said ‘We need jobs, stop using robots, give us back our jobs.’ He smiled grimly at that, remembering the last 100 years and how technology, had been invented by humans to help them but in fact all it had done was hurt their very existence.
Walking on, he followed the pathway to the right and made his way along to the edge of the castle, where he could see the first guard tower and the secret camouflaged door beneath it.
This coven was the head coven of vampires for the whole of the UK and it was situated deep below the Tower itself, right underneath all those humans who never had any idea it was even there or that pure evil lurked so deep beneath them.
He stopped for a moment to take a look around him and to make sure that there was no one in sight before reaching in. He felt for the hidden latch and opened it. The door was about six feet high and five feet wide, and no one had ever come close to discovering it.
Standing just inside the door, bathed in moonlight, were two guards holding spears vertically in front of them. Seeing Kaine, they stepped backwards and disappeared into the shadows, not daring to annoy him. He was well known here and had been coming to this coven for at least five hundred years or so on occasional meetings. The guards were told that there had been a meeting arranged today and the most important vampires from different covens were asked to attend.
The corridor ahead was extremely long and dark inside, only lit by the odd bunch of burning branches that were tightly bound together, wedged here and there and jammed sporadically either side of the rock walls. There was hardly even enough light from them to light a few meters, let alone the tunnel, but they were actually more for ceremonial purposes because of the meeting. He moved purposefully down the corridor into the darkness, ducking his head to avoid hitting the six-foot-high ceilings, and twisting his upper body to the side to stop his shoulders crashing against the walls as he passed. Finally he saw the stairs, which disappeared down into more darkness. As he began to descend, his eyes immediately flicked over into night vision and the steps became vividly clear, so clear in fact that it was as if they were washed in sunlight.
Flight after flight he descended, still going further and further down underground to where the main chamber was located. On every floor he passed, there were more and more guards dressed in black leather, huge in size and almost nearly as tall as himself. They had black shoes, black leather trousers, black shirts with high collars fastened tight around their necks and black silk capes that flowed down their backs to within an inch of the floor. On their hands they wore black leather gloves, and they each had a huge sword slung by their left sides. This weapon had a white leather handle and a simple gold band that weaved from end to end, as if it was a gold serpent crawling along the handle. The sword’s sheath, however, was made from hardened black leather. The guards’ pale white faces were expressionless, and their eyes were blacker than the darkness itself, as was their hair. Kaine didn’t even glance once at them as he passed. Not one of them dared to stand in his way for a second either.
Finally he reached the level he wanted, eighty floors below street level, deep underground. He always counted the floors every time he ca
me for meetings here, as if maybe one time they might strangely change. As he exited the stairwell he turned left, entering into a short corridor some forty feet long.
Ahead of him at the end stood a massive stone door. The door had markings carved all over it that were faded from hundreds of years but were still just about visible. They were drawings of vampires doing battle with demons, who were dragging humans kicking and screaming behind them. It always made him smile as he approached it, because he had fond memories of being in some of the battles depicted on it too. As he reached the door he grinned broadly, his shiny white teeth glistening in the flickering light that came off a wall candle in the far distance.
He knocked on the door with his huge fist, and wondered if Lucius, the guard who was petrified of him and he liked to tease, would be there to open it.
A brief second later, the door swung open and Kaine smiled, because standing there was Lucius.
‘WHAT KEPT YOU?’ Kaine demanded in a booming, powerful voice.
Lucius was shaking; he looked like he was just about to turn and run.
‘Er, sorry, I um…’ he managed. Then he lapsed into frightened silence. Those four words seemed to be the only words the guard could manage to say because he was shaking so badly. Walking past Lucius into the main hall, Kaine kept his face stern but inside he was laughing.
The main hall was the size of a large ice rink, not massive but still big enough for a large vampire meeting. The walls were made from solid rock that reached up a hundred feet into the darkness above. There were twenty large flaming torches that were again made of thick branches tied fast together, with rags wrapped around their ends. They were jammed into the walls and burning intensely, just a little higher up than the vampires who were already there, waiting for him. The light from the torches illuminated the floor area beneath the gathering, and was bright enough to seem as day. In the center of the room there was a spike that went deep into the ground, with a huge chain coming off it that was about ten feet in length. Each of the rusty links were about an inch thick, and seventy millimeters in diameter. It looked like it had been robbed from a shipyard.
The chain was made from solid steel, and shackled to it by their ankles were two humans. The first of them was a woman with long dark hair. She was almost naked, dressed only in a ripped beige blanket that was strewn over her left shoulder, and hardly covered any of her body beneath it. The second was a young girl who gripped the older woman’s hand tightly. She was in a similar costume. The younger girl seemed to be very scared, and by the lacerations around both of their ankles, it appeared that they had been trying for hours to free themselves.
The woman saw Kaine glance across at her; she spat at him and launched herself in his direction, but the ankle chain tore deep into her already raw flesh and stopped her. Dropping to the floor, she screamed in agony. Kaine felt sorry for her; like all humans, she had misjudged his intentions.
About twenty feet up the walls were small caves full of vampires. The caverns were ten meters deep and scattered all around the entire room. For a second as his peers stared down at him, he almost felt as if he was on trial here. However, he knew he wasn’t; he was a guest here too. Some of them he recognized, but of the two hundred there must have been, he thought he only knew a handful.
‘Saw you scaring Lucius, my guard, Kaine. Can’t you ever leave him alone?’ came a loud screeching voice from high above. The speaker laughed. ‘I nearly tore his head off myself when I came in. Just for fun that is, my dear Lucius. Maybe though your head is better off on your shoulders for the time being though,’ he croaked.
Kaine unfortunately knew the voice too well, and recognized it as Rex’s. The sound of it was bone chilling, pure evil; it was fucking horrible and hadn’t changed in years. Rex was a small, twisted, rotting vampire who was two thousand years old if a day, and about five foot tall, hiding as always behind a dark brown hood. His robe was like that of a monk’s and full in length, coming down to just past his toes.
Looking up, Kaine could see that Rex was in his normal place, sitting near his second in command, a vampire called Hoidrious. Rex was huddled on a rock that was jutting out only a few feet from the wall, next to Hoidrious on his rock. The leaders were positioned about ten feet higher up than the other vampires below them. Kaine remembered not to look at Rex directly though, not because he might be punished for it (hardly!), but simply because he was so hideously ugly. If he had been tempted to look up at the old creature, the mere memory of the last time he’d done so would most definitely be a deterrent; the thought made him feel quite sick.
Rex had warts and pustules all over his face and his skin seemed to be flaking and rotting off the bone. His face was also badly burned down the left side, and the rumor was that it was caused by holy water. No one really knew exactly though, and anyone who felt like they were bored with life had only to ask him about it, and their existence wouldn’t be lasting much longer.
He was also known for practicing strong dark rituals and took great pleasure out of watching someone die an agonizing death. It didn’t matter who they were either, even his own soldiers stood in as substitute on occasions too. Anyone would do. He was a master in all forms of torture, and if his victims died slowly and screamed for hours, he preferred that.
Hoidrious regularly wore similar attire to Rex, and today was no exception. They were both in hooded all-in-ones. It was questioned, generally in whispered conversations, as to whether they were twins. Because of their similar height and grotesque facial features, it seemed highly probable. If that were the case though, then naturally there would be great pity for the poor mother. Imagine the despair when these two had been humans, their looks alone would have suggested she must have had something deeply and terribly wrong with her womb.
Kaine despised the fact that he had come here. Being in Rex’s presence was already starting to annoy him, and he couldn’t understand why they were all so evil. He himself was a vampire, under the same curse, but wasn’t viciously nasty and nefarious like them. He got his enjoyment from nicer things, such as hunting deer, classical music, fine wines, art and nature. He would never kill a human himself unless they were clearly guilty like that robber had been outside, of the most heinous of crimes. In truth, the robber could consider himself extremely lucky to have experienced a much shorter death than usual. If Kaine hadn’t been late for the meeting, and with his views about robbers, his demise would have gone on much longer.
Kaine lived in Devils Dyke, a place near Brighton in the countryside, and felt he was so different from normal vampires that he couldn’t compare himself to them in the slightest.
He had deeply chiseled looks and his jaw line was in perfect symmetry. His skin was pale, with just the slightest shade of color--as if the human inside was somehow still playing a role in his existence. His eyes were sunken, but only slightly, and his black orbs shone as if they were liquid. The reflection coming off them was almost fourth dimensional. He was extraordinarily handsome, and with his blonde hair slicked back to within a hairs’ breadth past his ears, he was easily recognizable amongst his own kind.
‘Kaine, fellow brothers and sisters, I have called you here today to discuss our extinction,’ Rex began. ‘Are you ready to let it happen, or did you want to live a few thousand years longer? Those nasty humans have been breeding too much and Mother Nature is dying. In short, they are killing the Earth. We need to wipe out a massive number of them, cull them a little--well a lot really--leaving ten percent for us to feed from.’ Rex laughed, a horrible sound, and all the vampires started cheering and shouting. The noise was deafening, and the frenzy built up until their actions somehow turned into a massive argument.
‘SHUT UP, you miserable bastards!’ Rex shouted as he turned and stared down at them. When he didn’t get the immediate response he wanted, he added, ‘I will lock you all in here and burn the whole room after I leave if you don't shut up!’
That got their attention, and there was immediate order. Rex wen
t on to say he had a plan, which involved the two humans who were chained in their midst, and that they were the key to fixing the planet for them.
The silence was deafening as the vampires stared at each other in disbelief.
Finally someone shouted out, ‘What, that woman and young girl? Really?’ There was a sound of laughter, then he said, ‘Have you have gone mad, Rex? Not that you weren’t anyway. But really, how can they fix the planet, you old fool?’
‘You have wasted our time, making us come here to listen to this rubbish,’ someone else said loudly. Then others shouted out, ‘We are leaving!’