The Dark Messenger

by Milo Spires

  ‘Drink!’ he screamed, glancing back at the entrance, hoping there was still time.

  Seconds passed and he took his arm back and stood up. Blood was running down from his wrist and pooling on the ground beneath him.

  The process of saving a vampire from certain death meant for another to give him their blood, but afterwards he would be bonded to them for eternity as their slave. Not all cases of donating blood worked though, but this time it did. The repair process started immediately, severed veins rebuilt themselves, arteries closed, and the flesh pulled its self together.

  ‘I want to know how you found us,’ Kaine said.

  The vampire tried to laugh, but had to stop when he choked on fluids coming up his throat. A second passed; he swallowed the bile back down and said in clearer words, ‘You don't know? We had a scout called Longinus, he has been ere time follo you from hosptal, the piest girl.’

  At that moment, Regina came down the stairs.

  Kaine saw by her facial expression she was shocked to see him talking to the enemy.

  ‘We need a prisoner to question. And this one has Raffious’ bracelet on him,’ he said, pointing down to the warrior’s left arm.

  ‘What? How is he wearing that?’ she snarled.

  ‘Don’t know, but I intend to find out. Quick--can you pass me two grenades from that box over there?’ he said to her, pointing to the corner of the garage by the stairs.

  After passing him two silver grenades, she went to get a rag for his wrist.

  ‘Get in there!’ someone outside shouted.

  ‘Here goes again!’ Kaine screamed as he spun around and prepared himself for the onslaught that never came. Then hearing a scream from outside clarified the reasons too. A warrior must have refused his orders to attack, and in doing so he found himself punished with death.

  Kaine furrowed his brow at their tactics of killing those who refused their foolish orders.

  Realizing the next wave of attacks were seconds from happening, he threw two grenades out the door at the same time. Together the explosion shook the ceiling of his garage, and dust fell down from everywhere.

  ‘That will make them think twice.’ He said as he inhaled a mouthful of dust and started coughing.

  Regina asked him if he was ok and he nodded. Then she passed him two more grenades to reload whilst he spoke to the prisoner.

  ‘How many of you came here tonight?’ he demanded.

  ‘One hundred,’ the warrior replied, his voice stronger and clearer now.

  Kaine looked around again, and after quickly counting the bodies in the garage and guessing at the number of dead outside, he calculated there might be about eighty warriors still to fight.

  Ducking, he launched two more grenades out the doorway. The garage rocked violently with the explosion.

  ‘Darling, there’s four grenades left,’ Regina said with panic in her voice.

  ‘No problem, I have a plan.’ He turned to look at the prisoner again. ‘Tell me more about this idiot Longinus,’ he said.

  ‘Longinus has been in this time, following the woman, Jenny. He saw you carrying her from the hospital and trailed you here.’

  Hearing this, Kaine was furious, and also embarrassed, which showed as a look of thunder passed across his face.

  ‘What?’ he shouted, hardly believing he had been so stupid as to lure these warriors to his own house. He even remembered saying to his wife to be careful at the hospital because there might be another vampire around.

  ‘Where is he now?’ he demanded, as he thought about tearing Longinus apart for outsmarting him.

  Before his new slave could answer he heard a gun being loaded right outside the door. He heard the unmistakable sound of a magazine being rammed up inside the thing.

  Realizing grave danger was imminent! He screamed,

  ‘Down!’ as he dived to the floor and moments later bullets zipped overhead, tearing huge chunks of plaster from the walls.

  Regina screamed, and Kaine turned around to see that her arm had been hit and was now wide open from a bullet wound at the top of her shoulder.

  Covering himself with the body of a dead vampire, Kaine grabbed a sword and inaccurately flung it at the door. The vampire saw it coming though and leapt out of the way.

  ‘Throw me a grenade,’ Kaine telepathically messaged Regina but there was no time.

  Turning around she threw a single grenade out the door herself. A second later as it exploded, half a vampire leg and a buckets worth of blood, blasted back into the garage.

  Kaine grinned.

  ‘I’m very impressed,’ he said to Regina, his voice full of deep admiration. He wondered if the vampire who had just died might disagree though, as his tunnel of fire had sucked his conscious thoughts into hell.

  Realizing the grenades were all but finished, Kaine said he had a plan. He said he was going to blow the garage up using the last grenades. She looked puzzled but he pointed to a tall cylinder full of oxy acetylene welding gas. Regina looked back him with a look that suggested you must be fucking joking, only his facial expressions suggested otherwise.

  ‘Can you and Becky take this fucking prisoner upstairs please.‘

  Regina smiled to him as she grabbed the prisoner’s ankle and then Becky grabbed the other. Kaine noticed the vampire resisting and dealt with him accordingly. Now fast asleep from the brutal downwards punch he had received, both the women then charged up the stairs, dragging him in their wake.

  Kaine looked down at his dogs, they were filthy.

  Pointing to the stairs, he told them to follow. Charging across the floor without question, both of them twisted at the last second as they flew up the stairs.

  Walking over to the gas bottle, he ripped off the regulator valve and in doing so he released the gas at unbelievable pressure. The smell of it rushing out into the room was disgusting, and he thrust his hand across his mouth to avoid breathing in the vapor.

  Turning around it was his time to leave. One spark, one sword, one bullet from the enemy flying into the garage now with the extremely explosive gas in the air would be enough to blow him to kingdom come.

  Charging up the stairs, he paused at the top to do his impersonation of an old Arnie movie but alas, without the cigar sadly. Flicking out the pins on the two grenades he was holding, he grinned before saying ‘Ill be back.’ Then he dropped them behind himself and they spun and bounced carefree back down into the garage.

  Aware the moment for copying scenes from old movies was well and truly gone, he bolted like an athlete across the floor he was on. Reaching the stairs he grasped the banister and flung himself around.

  Suddenly there was a garish white flash and everything in his mind went blank.

  Chapter 21 – A Revolution

  Vius had been furious as he stood outside the doorway to Kaine and Regina’s house on the hillsides of Devil’s Dyke, because at that stage everything seemed to have been going so terribly wrong.

  He had just killed his best friend and loyal captain Voitek believing him to have slain their leader, only moments later to have found that he hadn’t killed Rex at all. What he had seen was just an orchestrated black magic trick, created by an old man with a long knee-length white beard, and that somehow like an amateur fool he had believed.

  Then the mission that should have been nothing more than a complete success, was actually failing abysmally, as his warriors were dying all around him in astronomical numbers.

  This was because somehow inside the garage entrance--which had taken them a long time to break down--there was an obviously highly trained warrior—a completely mad fucker, who, with the help of two vicious dogs, was tearing his warriors to pieces.

  The first wave of warriors had gone in with such energy, furious and fully prepared to kill anything they had found in their way. He had seen their enthusiasm and had smiled proudly, but within minutes the sickening screams that had come from the garage had made even his own spine tingle.

  Then the second wave of
warriors who had entered the garage bravely and without question had also succumbed to a vicious end. They were savagely torn to pieces too.

  As the third wave was preparing to go in, there was the profound feeling coming back at him from his warriors to just use machine guns, but he had ignored it. His reasoning was simply to avoid the desperately embarrassing stories in the future. Stories of how his men under his command had to abandon their traditional swords and cheat against one brave vampire. He did however let them use their shields, and at the time had every faith they would have been victorious.

  Then when this group had failed too and was also torn to pieces, apart from the deep anger, which had by then spread exponentially throughout him, also moral in the ranks had hit an all time low. Warriors were making dire comments about leaving and refusing to enter the garage.

  At that moment he had tried to restore their beliefs in success, and then decided to go down and personally order them to attack. He had felt sure they would have appreciated this rather than having the orders coming from their captains. Only they had refused his orders and stood fast without moving.

  Then to restore their respect and to make them never doubt or ignore another order of his again, he had taken out his sword and killed the first warrior in the cue.

  Only when the slain warrior’s body had hit the ground, the vampire in the garage must have heard him, because two silver grenades were hurled out the door. Then when they exploded, to add insult to injury, and to make an already bad situation far worse, the force of the explosion had thrown him, and him alone, head first into the bushes. The whole thing had been a deeply embarrassing affair.

  But it didn’t get any better at that stage because when he had clambered back out of the bramble thorns, and with the little bastards stuck deep in his flesh, he had been confronted by one of his subordinates, Captain Ognian. The goliath of a warrior had walked up to him with a disgruntled look upon his face, and told him he was pathetic. He had screamed in his face to stand down from his command.

  Of course he had turned around for support from the group as a whole, feeling sure they would stand behind him but they had looked away.

  Then as he had scraped undergrowth off his legs and chest, he had leapt back up and screamed at them, ‘What none of you will support me?’

  Their lack of response was shocking and made it harrowingly clear to him that a revolution was looming.

  ---------

  Now though in the present, and lost for words as rage like an insect then began to worm and burrow its way inside his brain, Vius spun around and demanded to know their reasons for the revolt.

  Suddenly two more grenades bounced out the door and exploded. Their lethal shards of silver like mini missiles flew in all directions and killed four more warriors that were within the blast radius.

  Captain Ognian was furious as he glared down at the body parts. It seemed that, so far, it was only his warriors who were being killed.

  ‘I demand you stand down from your command,’ Ognian said in a low voice. Then with anger etched across his face, he pulled out two swords and stood there shaking in fury. The wind was whipping through his long dark hair that perfectly framed his hardened features.

  Ognian was one of four captains underneath Vius. He was much more masterful and powerful in battle than Vius was, yet through the years for some reason he had never been promoted higher in the Elite warriors ranks. This had for some years pained him, and it drove a wedge between him and Vius. Of course he never let it show for obvious reasons, as Rex wouldn’t condone such immature behavior. Ognian, being the lesser, would have simply become a torture victim for the next time Rex got bored. Knowing this, he had always kept his mouth shut.

  When they had been in France at Brius’ palace and Rex was nearly killed, Ognian had thought that Vius would have been punished with death for disobeying their leader, but sadly only an eye was removed.

  Ognian was a monster that stood nearly eight feet tall. He towered over Vius by a clear foot in height and was almost twice as wide as him. In training, grappling and hand-to-hand combat, Ognian never had any issues slamming him down--even when he tried to cheat by opening his wings in his face the captain got the upper hand. He was stronger at sword fighting too, which owed primarily to the simple fact that he could attack with much more power behind his strikes. Often when Vius tried to block a move by holding his sword out horizontally, the massive power in Ognian’s downward strike either smashed both blades or sent the pathetic Vius sprawling.

  So fighting Vius now if he chose, which he doubted his superior would accept, would ultimately result in his death. The possibility of killing him was high, and with Rex and Mietioc not being around now either, there would be no one to complain or say otherwise as he stepped up into the number one position as leader of the Elite warriors.

  Dress-wise, Ognian favored thick leather. He wore this on his legs, across his back, and down his sides. Then across his chest he had a breastplate of steel, and down his arms the leather was ribbed and heavily bonded to the leather underneath, forming a flexible but effective defense against sword swipes.

  In response to Captain Ognian fronting up to him with his swords out, Vius returned him a withering stare.

  ‘Why would you challenge me Ognian, after all the years we have been fighting side by side?’

  ‘Because it is clear that just to keep up with the coven’s tradition of hand-to-hand combat, you would knowingly send us in there to our deaths, than to avoid bringing embarrassment on yourself in the future if stories were told. We are losing with swords, and after the first wave of warriors died we should have changed tactics and swarmed the garage with machine guns. Only, like a fool, you keep sending more of our brothers to their deaths and those who refuse you kill them too.’

  ‘Fine. You want to use machine guns…’ Vius grunted.

  Turning around he ordered a warrior who was standing next to him, a vampire named Ziuf to grab a machine gun. He told him to go to the entrance and blast the mad fucker inside.

  ‘One is not enough! Swarm the place!’ Ognian demanded.

  Two more grenades then bowled out as they were talking and killed three more warriors in a garish white flash. Afterwards the ones who got hit and didn’t die were staggering around screaming as the tried to pull out pieces of molten hot silver from their flesh.

  Vius ignored Ognian’s request to send more warriors and stood back to watch, hoping the one warrior now armed with a machine gun would have more success.

  Ziuf crept up to the entrance furtively but as he reached the doorway he looked down at his weapon in disgust--it was empty. Reaching behind himself and contradicting his clandestine approach, he slammed a new magazine into the gun. The noise it made as the steel casing slid inside the weapon was a horrifyingly loud, ear piecing metal-against-metal crunch.

  Ognian cursed as he realized the sound would have been heard inside the garage too.

  Holding the powerful weapon at waist height, Ziuf leapt into the entrance and pulled back the trigger on his machine gun.

  Even though he could see two female vampires and two dogs covered in blood and within easy range, he centered his efforts for retribution of his fallen comrades, by trying to hit the beastly male vampire first.

  The vampire must have heard him though.

  Strange, he thought as he watched him dive for cover behind two dead bodies. Using them as shields, he made it impossible for him to shoot him without brazenly stepping inside, which he wasn’t prepared to do.

  Furious, he turned to give the women a blast instead, but then the vampire that was hiding suddenly came back into view for the miniscule of time. As he appeared, he flung a sword at him and then disappeared again behind the dead bodies.