The Dark Messenger (6 page)

Suddenly there was a loud scream from
upstairs. Jolted into action, Tracy flew out her door. Luckily
Becky’s downstairs front door was unlocked; she threw it open and
charged up the stairs.

‘
Help! We are in here!
Quickly! Help!’ Jenny screamed as she heard someone
coming.

Tracy turned at the top of the stairs and
stared into the bathroom, hardly understanding what was going on.
Jenny was leaning over into the shower cubicle, desperately trying
to lift Becky, who was unconscious, naked and, in places, quite
bruised.

‘Oh my god!’ Tracy said, running into the
bathroom as the realisation of the grave situation suddenly clicked
into her mind.

‘Who are you?’ Jenny said, giving Tracy a
quick glance.

‘I’m Tracy, darling. From downstairs. I’m the
one who called you about the water coming through my ceiling. You
are Jenny, I presume?’

‘Er, yes,’ Jenny said, her eyes and mind
still on trying to get Becky out of the shower. She paused ever so
slightly before saying, ‘Have you got a phone on you? Mine is over
there in my jacket pocket if you haven’t.’ She looked up at Tracy,
fear in her eyes. ‘I know she will kill me for this, but I have to
call an ambulance.’

‘I have mine, don't worry,’ Tracy said,
reaching into her jeans pocket and taking out her mobile. Without
waiting a second she dialled 999 and was immediately connected to
the emergency services.

‘Hello caller, do you need Fire, Police or
Ambulance?’ the calm voice asked.

‘Ambulance, and quick!’ Tracy said urgently.
‘There’s a woman here, and she is unconscious. I think she’s in a
very bad way. The address is 65b Top Flat, Portslade High Street.
Come quick!’

Tracy clicked off the call before the
emergency call handler could answer. She had no time to talk
further. She knew some first aid, realized that they had to get
Becky lying on her side and warm, in the recovery position.

Jenny had heard Tracy say she thought Becky
was in a bad way and she almost broke into tears. She loved her
mate so much, and couldn’t bear to go through life without her.

Seeing that Jenny wasn’t going to be able to
do much because of her emotional attachment, Tracy threw her phone
down onto the carpet in the hallway and took over the
situation.

‘Right, no time for tears woman. Grab those
bath towels fast and lay them down on the floor. We need her on
them and in the recovery position,’ she said authoritatively.

Jenny quickly responded, reaching out past
the shower to a small shelf near the bath, where four big bath
towels were stacked. With one strong tug, she pulled them all down
onto the floor. Grabbing two of the towels, she laid them out fully
on top of each other. Together, she and Tracy carefully pulled
Becky out of the shower and laid her down on them. Tracy quickly
placed her fingers inside Becky’s mouth, checking that her tongue
wasn’t blocking her airway.

There was a commotion downstairs, and then a
man’s voice called up, ‘Hello, it’s the ambulance.’

‘Come up!’ Jenny and Tracy both shouted.

In the two seconds before they arrived, Jenny
quickly covered her mate’s naked body from the neck down but when
she went to smooth down Becky’s hair, she was horrified at what she
saw. On her neck were two festering holes, one just an inch above
the other. She noticed straight away that the skin around them was
inflamed and pus was leaking out too.

‘Oh my god! Look at these’ she whispered
hoarsely, looking up into Tracy’s eyes.

‘I know darling, I saw them a minute ago.’
Tracy’s voice trembled. ‘Bad, whatever they are.’

Suddenly two ambulance men came into the
bathroom and rushed straight across to Becky’s side.

‘Give us space,’ the first man commanded, as
he put his bag down and checked Becky’s pulse.

‘
What happened to her?’ the
other man asked, looking at Tracy.

Tracy shook her head. ‘I don't know. I live
downstairs. Jenny here found her.’

Tracy then looked across at Jenny, who was in
tears. She had moved enough for the man to do his work, but had
stayed close enough to gently stroke Becky’s hair.

‘Ma’am?’ the man said, looking at Jenny with
eyebrows raised.

‘I, er, um, don't actually know. I found her
here unconscious. She woke up for a few seconds, then she passed
out again,’ Jenny answered through her tears. Then she gazed
imploringly at the ambulance worker and asked, ‘Will she be
alright? Tell me she will…’

Seeing that Jenny was clearly in shock, the
man put his hand on her shoulder and asked gently, ‘We need to
know, darling--has your friend taken anything? Maybe pills of some
kind? Can you tell us?’

‘Sorry, I don't know. But I doubt it.’ Jenny
gazed at her unconscious friend’s face. ‘I just got here myself and
found her like this.’

Tracy moved round to Jenny’s side, and Jenny
buried her face into Tracy’s shoulder as another outburst of tears
followed.

The man who had been checking Becky’s vitals
sat back, and in an urgent voice said, ‘We must be quick. She’s
alive, but there’s hardly any pulse.’ The two men stood and hurried
to their equipment. ‘Everyone out of the way,’ he continued as they
prepared to take Becky out. ‘We must get her to hospital quickly.’
They immediately lifted her onto a collapsible stretcher and within
seconds were carrying her down the stairs.

Jenny followed with Tracy, who asked after
Becky was put into the ambulance if they could both go with
her.

‘Only direct family and close friends can
come,’ the driver replied.

‘I’m her best mate,’ Jenny said. ‘I’m the
closest she’s got.”

‘Okay then, get in. But you will have to be
quiet.’

Jenny nodded gratefully and with a hug to
Tracy, climbed into the back.

Seconds later, the sirens were blaring and
the ambulance was carving its way through traffic, heading for
town.

Chapter 6 - The
Vision

Kaine had not slept well at
all that night and had lain awake for hours, his wife fast asleep
next to him. He had woken up several times in the night, and had
been wide-awake since 4 a.m because of a dream.
It had seemed much more real, though, than a simple
dream
, he kept telling himself. This was
much clearer than usual, and in it he was fighting werewolves. It
just wouldn’t leave his mind! The visit to Rex’s coven, the
room—those…creatures!

Dreams are just
dreams,
he thought. He’d always believed
that they were usually full of simple images that the mind had
pieced together from the past, letting your imagination play with
them whilst you slept. He was sure, though, that this was more than
that—much,
much
more in fact. It had been so unbelievably clear.

Kaine had experienced a vision once before,
500 years previously. It had shown him the vampires’ war against
the werewolves, but the odd thing was that it hadn’t started yet.
Everyone he told about the vision, except his wife, had simply
laughed when he had suggested to them that it might have been a
vision of the future. His dream, or premonition, or whatever it
was, had shown him that there would be a war coming with beasts
called ‘werewolves’. No one believed then that the werewolves would
ever exist in the way he had seen in his vision, and that the
beasts would kill so many of them. The war did happen though, just
as his vision had shown him. Everything he had seen in it, the
vampires he’d seen fall, and the massive vampire casualties had
happened just as the dream had suggested.

Restless and unable to get back to sleep,
Kaine slipped out of bed and sat in a comfortable chair. His
thoughts roamed as he gazed around the room, his mind settling on
nothing in particular. As the minutes ticked by, he finally drifted
back to sleep.

-------------------------

Kaine lived with his wife beneath an old,
ruined brick building. The roofless monolith was a leftover from
the British past, when a train line used to connect their area of
Devils Dyke to one of Brighton’s sub-villages called Hangleton. He
and his wife had moved into it completely unnoticed by the locals
and had been there for nearly fifty years or so.

The only one slight issue was the neighboring
building, two hundred meters away, called The Devils Dyke public
house. On weekends the area around it was busy with hang-gliders,
dog walkers, runners, and the like. After dark, though, when he and
his wife Regina were usually awake, the landscape was nearly always
empty. There was only the wind whistling outside to let them know
that they were not completely alone.

The building was situated high up on the
hillside, and looked out to the west above fields that were far
below them. At night the view was simply amazing, with lights from
peoples’ homes scattered romantically across the horizon. Kaine and
Regina often sat up on the hillside, breathing in the gorgeous sea
air and taking in the beautiful view around them.

To the north, they could clearly see a long
line of bright yellow lights from the fast road called the A23,
which looked like a brightly-lit serpent that was crawling off and
vanishing into the distance. The small village nearest to them, far
below but no more than a mile away, was called Fulking. It had a
small population, with only 250 people living there. In the center
of the village was a beautiful little pub called The Shepherd and
Dog, where the couple often found themselves enjoying a glass of
wine or two in the early evenings, at least in the winter months
when it was dark.

Southerly, only a couple of miles away, was
the sea. It could easily be seen from the ruined brick building
during the daylight hours. Occasionally, Kaine and Regina would
take in the view, wearing their skin wraps to protect themselves
from the sun. This area of the seashore was a popular tourist
attraction with a lot of history behind it, dating back as far as
the Iron Age.

On the other side of the hill in which their
dwelling was buried was a famous valley known as Devil’s Dyke. It
was boasted as being nearly the longest, deepest and widest ‘dry
valley’ in the UK, often with a splendid living carpet of flowers
and a full myriad of colorful insects. At one time, long before
Kaine and Regina’s arrival, the valley also had a cable car, a
vehicle that was precariously suspended 230 feet above the valley
floor.

Kaine and Regina had left the building above
their house completely untouched, and used it as the perfect cover
for their home below. Cows would come inside the ruin during the
winter months to seek shelter from the salty sea winds outside, and
Regina used to sometimes sit with them, just to let the time pass
by.

Their home was situated high up on the
hillside offering a perfect vantage point should they ever be
attacked, although this was only one minor reason for their choice.
The main reason was for the magnificent views.

There was only one room inside the ruined
building and it was mostly covered in grass, mud and cow dung. The
fact that it was roofless kept it fresh from smells. On the far
left of the main entry was a small kiosk-sized room. Inside was a
hidden doorway, and behind that was a spiral staircase leading down
to a room that they called the ‘Traps Room'. This area was filled
with deadly traps and left this way as a precaution against
invaders. It had a violent smell inside too, which the couple
ignored; they thought it quite matched the idea that enemies would
die in there.

Over in the far corner of this room was a
small brick wall that jutted out, behind it there was another
hidden doorway with a spiral staircase that led down into the
couple’s gorgeous home. All the spiral staircases they had actually
installed themselves so that if ever they were attacked, only a few
of their enemies could get down at a time, giving Kaine and Regina
a chance to fight back.

There were no windows anywhere, but this was
by no means any issue. Their home was in the beautiful countryside,
and they knew it was far more secure this way. It had only one main
entrance in, and their secret emergency way out on the lowest
level, in what they called their garage.

Kaine had installed cameras in many places
outside. One of them was disguised as a brick, and he had placed it
up high inside the old ruined building. It was wirelessly linked
downstairs with the others that were also scattered around the
place. They all streamed video to the couple’s iPads and the main
iMac computer. The Devils Dyke pub camera was only a couple hundred
meters away, and it looked across the expanse, providing backup to
their top entrance camera. There were two more cameras that he had
positioned down the hillside that were watching their emergency
exit too. The cameras were all battery-powered, but used very
little power when on standby, and were equipped with night vision
and motion detection.

Their new toy was a drone that lived inside a
tiny wooden shelter situated at the base of their hill. On top of
the shelter was a small solar panel, which provided enough power to
keep it charged at all times. The shelter was completely hidden and
surrounded by dense blackthorn bushes that were severely painful to
touch. Operated remotely from inside the house on their iMac or
iPads, it gave full HD video live-streaming that allowed them to
see everywhere whilst it flew for miles in all directions. The
battery charge lasted for twenty minutes, and it could go up as
high as two miles without the signal dropping.