Outside Hell (14 page)

Then as he’d reached the door, his bowman’s
crossed strings on his right arm glistened in the flickering light
that was coming off a wall candle in the far distance.

Raising his hand he’d wrapped his knuckles
hard against the doors surface three times, and with every strike
like sand trickling down in a sand timer, dust had fallen to the
floor. Then as he’d listened he could hear the sound of a huge
stone slab as it was being slid across from the other side, and a
second later the door had finally started to open.

As it did and because of its extreme weight,
the door creaked heavily like it was suffering from intense
agonizing pain. Then as it was still creaking suddenly the most
finite blade of surreal light had blasted out from around it edges.
The color was rich gold and conjured up in his mind the simple
ideology that if such beauty could exist in this place of evil,
then maybe just maybe, all the souls of the tortured victims could
find their way to Heaven after all.

Then as that thought had nurtured his brain,
suddenly the beacon of hope vanished as the door had finally
succumbed to the doorkeeper’s power and swung back. As it did there
was an instant wave of deeply oppressive stench that poured out
from the other side, and Lucious the doorman approached him.

Dracus had cursed inwardly that he’d
forgotten to take a deeper and longer breath beforehand though, and
fearing the savage bite of the stench as it had gone down inside
his chest, he’d reluctantly breathed in the tiniest portion of it
that immediately resulted in his half digested dinner, suddenly
rising up his throat because of it.

Lucious who was used to the stench, simply
looked up at him with his mouth wide open and grinned. He’d worked
opening this door for hundreds of years, and in that time he’d
witnessed the greatest of the great fall to their knees, as the
vile odor had encroached upon their senses.

Then approaching Dracus and careful not to be
seen, Lucious had whispered to him. “Are you ready.”

“Yes.” Dracus said as he’d looked down and
caught sight of two swords that were standing vertically behind the
doorkeeper with their tips in the dirt, whilst leaning back against
the damp rock wall. Their blades glistened whilst their white
leather handles with simple gold bands looked like serpents, as
they’d weaved their way along them.

Then allowing the doorman to see a quick
smirk and saying no more so as not to draw suspicion, he’d stepped
through the doorway into the cavernous arena beyond and was
instantly bathed in the flickering light, that washed down over him
from several burning torches mounted in the rock wall above. Then
as he’d walked forwards a few paces, suddenly the heavy stone door
behind him was slammed shut.

The main hall that Dracus was standing in was
like the size of an ice rink. Its walls were about a hundred feet
high, and apart from disappearing into the darkness, they were
jagged and glistened from the water that was constantly dripping
down from above.

In front of him and slightly to the right
there were entrances with sliding doors that led off underneath the
evil Rex’s quarters, and then others that had grimmer destinations,
such as the dungeons chopping rooms below. Then above these about
forty feet up or so and scattered around the entire room, there
were caves filled with hundreds of vampires. These evil undead
creatures with their predatory blood stained fangs and deathly pale
faces that eerily glistened in the flickering light, were shouting
and leering down at him.

Since joining the coven Dracus was given a
dark brown leather bowman’s tunic by Rex that had cross strings on
his forearms, and down the right hand side of his body and held
there by a long strap passing across his chest from his opposite
shoulder, he’d a quiver full of cursed arrows. His trousers were
leather and his brown boots had silver buckles across the fronts of
them that reached down diagonally to the sides.

“So Dracus, what have you to say for yourself
about what happened in Paris?” Came a loud screeching voice from
high up above him. Dracus never replied and simply stood there
slouched for the effect, whilst looking down at the ground beneath
him with a mischievous grin.

As the voice had spoken, suddenly all the
vampires in their caves that were still hurling down their vicious
abuse at the bowman, and fearing the punishment of death if they’d
kept going, then instantly shut their mouths and listened.

The voice was his master Rex’s who was
sitting high up in his normal place on a ledge that looked somewhat
like a diving board, as it had jutted out from the rock wall in the
center of the room. His second in command Hoidrious stood beside
him on his own ledge that was parallel to Rex’s, and apart from a
half-meter space beneath them, it conjured up the idea that if it
wasn’t a slab of rock, then it could have been stolen from a
swimming pool too.

The two leaders were dressed in their usual
robes similar to what monks dressed in, only today the color wasn’t
their normal stale brown, but a rich gleaming red. Then apart from
the hoods that were drooping down to cover their hideous faces,
they’d white ropes that were tied fast around their waists, hanging
down and then finishing with tassels parallel to their knees.
They’d looked like with the torches burning and the room ominously
alive in whispering shadows, that they were members of an esoteric
sacrificial group or something.

Hoidrious
regularly wore similar attire to Rex, and today was no exception.
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.

Then as Rex had prepared to speak again, he’d
coughed deeply whilst sucking up dark phlegm from the back of his
throat that was full of sinister lumps of nastiness.

“Satan has demanded retribution for your
actions against him.” He’d croaked as he’d swallowed the mouthful
of phlegm back down again.

In response Dracus shuffled his feet in the
dirt beneath himself, and then smirked inwardly as the hilarious
image of Satan with four of his cursed arrows stuck in his neck in
Paris, had appeared in his mind.

“I bet he has,” Dracus said, and then started
grinning.

Rex saw the bowman’s mocking grin and then
with rage flourishing through his demonic veins, he’d launched
himself forwards to the edge of the ledge that he was standing on.
Then at the same time he spat a whole mouthful of dark phlegm down
at him, only as it had looked like it was going to be a direct hit,
in the last second Dracus stepped aside and it’d missed him. The
lump of festering tar like phlegm had buried itself deep in to the
dusty floor, just inches away from the bowman’s feet.

Then in response Rex snarled and his already
rotting face that had warts and pustules all over it suddenly
screwed up so tight, that it had and almost cracked to accommodate
the evil expression.

“You think this is funny?” the old crone said
as he’d then sucked up another mouthful of phlegm to reload, but
something inside went wrong and he’d clasped his chest and started
to cough vehemently.

Dracus said looked up at him and then
grinned.

No one ever came to the
cavernous room and didn’t have the utmost respect for Rex, because
they’d known the punishment would be death. Then those that were
ever summoned to stand in the dirt beneath him, they hadn’t ever
survived either. 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 if they were his own loyal
soldiers or not. They 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’d preferred
that
.

The feeling in the room was the bowman had to
die, but then it‘d clearly looked like Rex and Hoidrious had
already made that decision as they were dressed in sacrificial
robes, only Dracus had a plan and before he’d put it into motion,
he was having great fun slagging the old bastard off. Dracus wanted
to make Satan so furious with him that the evil bastard would drop
everything to follow him back to his own world of Eldor, then once
there he’d get him to fight Vrakug.

What will Dracus do to enrage the horned fool
even more though, I wonder?

Meanwhile in the other room of the Shack in
the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, there’d been a group of young
drunken males who’d come from England on a snowboarding holiday,
and were eagerly paying woman in bikinis for pleasures up
stairs.

Kaine and Regina had seen them as they’d
both entered the old shack.

They were inside the first room and standing
only a few feet in front of them. They’d looked pretty drunk, and
apart from the lascivious stares that they were giving the women in
bikinis, they’d seemed harmless enough. They were just a group of
young testosterone fuelled up guys, that were looking to get laid
anyway they could.

One of the lads had even looked at Regina
and whispered slightly too loud that he’d wanted to take her
upstairs and have sex with her.

The boy was obviously thinking that as it
was a whorehouse, she’d worked there. He’d thought that she was
going to get changed out of her badass boots and sexy gear into a
bikini before taking orders. The boy had been terribly wrong
though, and was a million miles away from the truth.

In response to the comment Kaine had
furrowed his brow, and then with his mind fuming and only wanting
revenge against Sorchek, he’d ignored it. Regina though, who wasn’t
entirely sure that he’d let it go without giving the lad a little
jab in the jaw, had tried to placate the situation by whispering
something in his ear.

She’d said to Kaine that he’d turned her on,
and that it was making her wet just thinking about all the women
fucking upstairs. Then she’d said that she couldn’t wait to get him
home, because when she did she was going to ride him like she’d
never ridden him before. Then after she’d slipped her hand around
the front of Kaine’s trouser and given him just the slightest bit
of sexual teasing, resulting in him having a limp in his walk,
they’d walked about five feet across the room to the relief bar to
get a drink.

A few minutes had passed as they’d savored
the taste of their pungent liquids and appreciated the burn, when
and much warmer from the freezing conditions that they’d endured
outside in the deep snow and harsh blizzards, Kaine and Regina had
gone through into the other room and moments later Regina had been
killed. Only when the young guys heard the explosion, and then
looked through the doorway and saw blood and brain matter spraying
out into the room where they were standing, they’d screamed and
charged for the exit. Then in the chaos and after pushing each
other out of the way, they’d found to their horror that the door
leading out of the joint was locked, and at the same time the
extremely sexy women with their olive skin, dark eyes and massive
breasts, had suddenly changed into the undead immortal killing
machines from Hell. Their fangs had thrust down and their demonic
eyes glazed over as their razor sharp nails climbed out from
beneath their skin, readying themselves to rip the boys to
pieces.

One of the boys had looked behind whilst he
was getting up after he’d tripped in the mayhem, and the sight of
the vampires charging, had made him piss himself.

Pure piss had flowed down his trouser leg
and lashed heavily against the old timber floorboards that were
beneath him. Then as a second had passed and in the blink of an
eye, suddenly he’d felt savage pain in his throat, and in response
he’d clutched up in wild terror at the gaping wound of where
moments before his Larynx had been. His executioner had stood there
grinning at him, whilst she was holding half his neck in her
heavily blood stained hands.

The other vamp girls didn’t wait around
either. They’d sliced and diced most of the other boys for their
party of death too. Only Oliver had escaped and slipped through the
net. He’d fallen over in the center of the room as he’d made a
desperate attempt to rush up the stairs. Then after he’d witnessed
his friends Karate lessons having abysmal results against the
vampires, and moments later he’d found himself panic stricken to
the core and making a wild dash for it.

As he’d climbed to his feet and then leapt
over a fallen chair, he’d glanced through the archway to where
Regina had died, and his eyes had wished they hadn’t too. Inside
the arch that was dripping in blood and brain matter, he’d seen the
silhouettes of four beings covered in blood and drinking from the
headless neck of the woman that his mate had only moments before
thought she was turning up for work and was going to get changed
out of her badass gear.

The gruesome sight had instantly scarred his
mind and in turn and by the very nature of it, he’d known that it
was there for an eternity, and would never leave.