The Dark Messenger

by Milo Spires

  He had good reason to think that too. He and ninety nine other warriors had broken into his home, which would warrant torture in the most heinous of ways. He had also seen him single handedly chopping his comrades to pieces, so he had no illusions about Kaine’s strength and ability. Then his wife had demonstrated her anger on him by breaking his shoulder and elbowing him in the head, before finishing him off with zip ties that cut deep into his flesh.

  ‘Darling before you question that fucking scum, don’t you want to take a shower first?’ Regina asked. ‘After all, you are quite filthy.’

  He looked down at himself, and had to agree. His battle gear was covered in dirt and dried blood, and he had a slice down his left cheek with blood on his chin. His hair, which was normally slicked back and had been that way at dinner, now looked like he had gone through a hedge backwards or maybe even two hedges backwards. Parts of it around his forehead were sticking up in the air and the back was splayed out in all directions, as if maybe he hadn’t nearly died in a massive explosion, but was exploring some kind of new vampire/rock kind of look.

  ‘No darling, there’s no time. I need answers first, then maybe I will.’ he said as he crouched down in front of the prisoner.

  ‘I ask you straight, will you help us? We need honest answers and I must remind you that if you lie once, the punishment I was going to give you downstairs, will very much still apply.’ he said as he glanced across at the dogs.

  Then just before the prisoner was going to answer, he also asked him if he was telepathic and if he could communicate with the warriors outside. The prisoner told him that he wasn’t telepathic. Kaine tried to scan his mind to find proof of this but couldn’t find anything. Kaine was aware there are a few vampires who aren’t telepathic, but then if he truly wasn’t, how come he was in their Elite forces? Surely Rex wasn’t stupid enough to use warriors without telepathy skills. Its crucial in war to have this ability, it can mean the difference between life and death.

  ‘OK well for now I believe you, but again if you are lying I will fuck you up something proper.’

  ‘I promise im not telepathic,’ he almost shrieked. The words poured out of him. ‘Anyway what do you want to know? I know Rex died in a reservoir of holy water, the priest or Angus killed him. I know where Longinus is. He has gone back to 2099, he summoned a time shifter outside called Raffious who arrived and then tricked our leader Vius. I know they went to get the Trucale vase. I know th….’

  Grabbing him by the throat and slamming him back against the wall, Regina demanded to know what Raffious looked like. She was furious and guessed that everything that had happened so far to them was just a portent of darker things to come.

  ‘He’s, er small, has a very long white beard, and I was told he is desperately looking for a vase that Christ blessed. Sorry, that is all I know about him,’ he said as he tried to speak through a shallow windpipe, her hand still tightly around his throat.

  ‘I will break the old bastard’s bloody neck I'm sure of it.’ Kaine shouted as he stood up.

  Looking down at the prisoner he could see his sudden outburst was scaring him. ‘Calm yourself, I am not going to hurt you, I am just angry because that guy was our friend and he would let us die rather than warn us you were going to attack.’

  Turning to look again at his wife he said, ‘All those years we knew Raffious, and he does this to us.’ He shook his head ruefully.

  Becky felt overwhelmed with rage and as it raced through her veins, and her fangs burst out of her gums. ’I knew I should have killed him earlier!’ she screamed.

  Jenny turned and saw the fangs again and slapped her hard across the face. She hated seeing the fangs. ’Don’t do that! How many times do I have to tell you? It scares me!’ she shouted at her.

  Kaine saw the slap and laughed, then everyone laughed, and even the prisoner smiled.

  Curiosity overcame any fear Jenny might have had of the prisoner. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked as she walked towards him.

  ‘My name is Arquin, and I am truly sorry to be meeting you in this way. I had to come or they would have killed me before the jump in time. I have been trying to escape them for centuries, but they watch everyone so closely. They know there are lots of us inside the coven who want to run, but no one ever admits it for obvious reasons. Rex would kill us if we did.’

  ‘How do you know this Longinus guy so well?’ Kaine asked.

  ‘I met him when I was on guard duty outside Rex’s chamber. I saw him looking suspicious and asked him what he was doing? He denied he was doing anything and walked away but I suspected something, just I couldn’t be sure of it.’

  Regina then said ‘Why would this Longinus guy be helping Raffious though? Before she turned to Kaine and said ‘Do you think it might be the same guy from your vision, darling?’

  Pausing, he furrowed his brow, and then said,

  ‘I think so, because in my vision Rex had told someone called Longinus to go back in time to turn her, so YES, I suppose it must be.’

  ‘A couple of weeks later I saw Longinus again and then we became friends. A few more weeks passed and he told me that Raffious will trade him his powers of jumping forwards in time if he helps him get something. I asked what and he cautious at first but then as he knew I could be trusted, he told me.

  ‘Raffious wants Rex’s piece of the Trucale Vase from inside his chambers.’

  Even though the punishment for being in there is death preceded by a violent torture, I agreed to help him—but only if he helped me escape the coven. If he got it, I told him he only had to drop me in another time in the future. All I truly wanted was to escape them and nothing else.’

  Jenny felt sorry for Arquin, and she smiled at him. He returned her smile.

  ’Can’t we untie him? There’s blood leaking down from his wrist’s.’ She asked

  Regina shook her head. ‘No way, he stays there until we leave.’

  But as she said her words, Kaine had already sliced through the zip ties with his razor-sharp fingernails. Regina’s mouth hung open in disbelief.

  Arquin brought his arms forwards and stretched out. The feeling of having his arms fully outstretched in front of himself again was amazing, and he felt immense relief as the tendons clicked back into position. He could almost hear the blood in his upper body charge down the empty veins that had been squashed shut for the last half an hour.

  Just to remind him of the punishment should he try to escape, Kaine then said about the dogs ripping him to shreds, before Regina grabbed him around the throat and told him that before the dogs tore him apart, that she would fuck him up too.

  Chapter 23 - Gaining Access

  Everyone gathered in the lounge, and Kaine was thoroughly exhausted from all the fighting he had been doing downstairs. The warriors outside had started digging through the rubble below trying to find them, as he had suspected they would. He didn’t care though, because in a few hours’ time the sun would be coming up. To avoid being reduced to a pile of black ash by the harmful UV rays, he knew they would have no options but to stop digging and leave.

  Jenny then Leapt up and said she was going into the kitchen to clean up the dust. Becky threw her new Vogue magazine down and went with her.

  Kaine who was covered in dirt and sprawled across the sofa with his feet up, had tried to switch his mind off and relax, only he found he couldn’t stop thinking about Raffious.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about Raffious either,’ Regina messaged him after reading his mind. ‘It was only the other morning that you woke me up saying about the vision. So much has happened since then too.’ She said with anger building in her voice.

  ‘Something just isn’t right about all of it though. Raffious had the cheek to come here and sit at our dinner table, then to blame you for the vampire war in the future too. He annoyed me when he kept saying that you had warned the Scots by sending that email as well. I thought he was supposed to be wise and know absolutely everything. If he does know everythin
g, then he must have known that this is where our long friendship ends. He obviously doesn’t care either, because if he did he would leap back in time and change things so we don’t fall out. As we are here talking about it, I guess he hasn’t leapt back in time and changed it, so he doesn’t care then. If that’s right then he must have been using us all along. But what for?’ he asked, as he furrowed his brow.

  Regina nodded as she remembered the phone call with the old boy on the morning of the vision, where he’d had a condescending tone with her. He had also seemed extremely eager to make the call quick, before saying he had to go as he had cut her off. At the time considering all of it was most out of character for him, she had been quite suspicious of it. Only knowing that he knew about the attack too, it was clear to her now that they didn’t even know the half of what the sick bastard was up to.

  Remembering another part of the vision, where Rex was saying that Jenny didn’t live long past 2014. Kaine wondered whether he should tell Jenny, only considering her reaction earlier when she had learned Rex’s warriors were looking for her, maybe not.’ he thought.

  ‘No! Don’t! It will only scare her,’ Regina messaged.

  ‘But what if it’s too late? What if it’s here that she dies?’ he messaged but didn’t get as reply because the floor began to shake.

  Kaine leapt up from the sofa, and together with Regina, they both ran across to the stairway and opened the door. Looking down it was still the same as before, the dust permeating the air and the visibility was almost zero. Closing the door again, Kaine assured her that the sun would be up before the warriors could dig a tunnel deep enough to hide all of them from its murderous rays. She had smiled to him in reply but still inside she couldn’t shake this nagging feeling she had. In her mind she felt like somehow they were missing something.

  Kaine was cautious not to let Regina read his thoughts as he thought about how the warriors always seemed to be unerringly digging in the right direction. They didn’t know his house, and considering it was underground, how could they be sure they were digging the right way. For a time he had thought there was no way they would find them, but now being that sunrise was still a few hours away, he was having second thoughts about it.

  ‘Did you say earlier that Raffious had blamed Regina for sending an email, warning the Scots that my coven was going to attack them?’ Arquin asked, hoping they would be more receptive towards him now.

  Regina turned and gave him a withering stare. She had her suspicions about him, and felt there was something he wasn’t telling them, only couldn’t place what it was.

  ‘Yes, he blamed me and I was very upset, but what is any of that to do with you? Kaine, can’t we knock him out and throw him downstairs in the dusty room? There’s something about him I don’t like,’ she said.

  Now seriously hoping what he was about to say would have a profound effect on their decision to not knock him out, he took a chance and said, ‘Longinus told me that Raffious informed the Scots about Rex attacking them in the future. It was when he was up there collecting his first piece of the vase. Then there was something about Angus relating it to an illegible email they’d received many years before, an email that they couldn’t read except for two words, attack and your coven.

  Regina’s glare had become quite oppressive to say the least, but as she registered what he had just said, the glare vanished and was replaced with a deep smile instead.

  Realizing he had but a moment more to impress, he added, ‘Longinus said that Angus told Raffious he’d had a strong suspicion the attack he was warning them about, was the very same one that the email was trying to warn them about too.’

  Regina then flung her arms around him in the chair he was sitting in, and kissed him on the cheek.

  As complete shock was coursing through Arquin’s veins, she turned to Kaine and cried, ‘Raffious is a lying bastard! So they never even received my fucking email then!’

  Kaine walked over to Arquin and held out his hand. ‘Thank you for telling us my wife was not guilty after all. She would never have been able to forgive herself for sending that email had you just told her they never received it.’

  Then as rage overtook him, he screamed out ‘I WILL KILL RAFFIOUS FOR THIS, That BASTARD had the cheek to sit at our table and make you feel bad after cooking for him, when he knew all along that it was him who had warned the scots. He must be fucking sick in the head!’

  The dogs were both extremely confused by Kaine’s outbreak and started walking towards Arquin, snarling and showing their teeth.

  Arquin saw them coming and pushed himself backwards in his chair, the legs of it digging into the floor as he desperately tried to get away. Regina because of her excitement couldn’t understand for a moment what he was doing. Then when she did realize, she grabbed hold of the dogs just in time.

  After a few minutes of silence, Regina then said that when all this was over they should invite Raffious around for dinner and she would poison his food. Then just before the poison kicked in as he was sitting at the table, she would apologize and say to him she hoped he could forgive her actions. She predicted his reaction would be his usual mountain of words, but then when she described the death the old boy would receive, it was absolutely evil. Something about intense pressure in his head as his lungs began to melt and his bones became brittle. Then as he collapsed to the floor, she would give him half the antidote, not enough to cure him though, but just enough to prolong his pain whilst she stamped on his head.

  Hearing her idea made Arquin feel quite sorry for Raffious, but Kaine was somewhat amused at the notion of him dying under her foot. He didn’t answer though because inside he was still fuming.

  ‘Calm down. One day we will get our revenge for sure,’ Regina messaged him.

  Then Arquin said, ‘Yes, calm down. As your wife just said, I’m sure one day you will get your revenge.’

  Kaine went mad and whirled on him.

  Regina had messaged that to me and hadn’t said it aloud, so Arquin you are telepathic and have probably been allowing the warriors downstairs from your messages, to pinpoint our exact location!

  Kaine grabbed him around his head and then twisted his body and with a almighty hard yank, ripped it clean off.

  Now standing there with Arquin’s head in his hands and blood spraying everywhere, he found he was lost for words. He couldn’t believe what an idiot he had been to think Arquin would have been telling the truth about him not being telepathic.

  Of course not. Probably most of what he had told them had been a lie too. Then he wondered if the part about Raffious trying to get the Trucale vase was true as well?

  Jenny had seen the horrific moment when Arquin had had his head ripped off and responded instantly by vomited everywhere. Then with lines of sick dangling, she ran off into the other room.

  Chapter 24 - Honoring a deal

  Raffious entered into the 2099 time period preparing to get the last piece of the vase with Longinus. They appeared just a few roads away from the Tower of London on a freezing cold night. The sky was brightly lit with streaks of ultraviolet colors as the moon fought desperately to penetrate the heavy pollution.

  Longinus couldn’t believe how much the future had changed. He wondered if even a supernova’s rays might have trouble blasting their way through the seemingly possessed sky above him.

  The biting wind was subzero as it screamed all around and the trees with their empty branches shook violently, casting long shadows that looked like demons ganging up as they came towards him.

  He felt extremely ill inside, and as he swallowed he felt his throat resist, then reverse as it brought up a mouthful of vomit.

  As he looked about through the small trees that were scattered here and there, he noticed that apart from the twisting stretch of the murky river behind him, there was nothing in this time period that suggested life at all. The buildings in the distance, which once made the night into day with their abundance of lights, were now just dark empty shells.
It was as if they had been left as a reminder of life existing before the deadly diseases had swept through the land.