The Dark Messenger (48 page)

Also
Angus had phoned the next day after the full moon and was
furious with Hoidrious.

He had
said the infected humans had been within his coven walls all the
time, but they hadn’t been found before they had turned into
werewolves. That night hundreds of his coven members had been
savagely torn to pieces. He decried how his intent to help
Hoidrious had obviously backfired upon him, and the plan to
overthrow Rex had somehow again turned full circle.

In his violent rant on the phone, and just before slamming
down the r
eceiver, he had threatened should the war continue and more
warriors arrive to attack them, he would make it publicly known who
had arranged the whole thing.

Hoidrious
was at his wits’ end and knew as a result he would be found guilty
of treason by his own coven. They would be undeniably furious with
him, and the punishment would be death. Probably in the deeply
traditional way too, his being hung, then drawn, and afterwards
violently quartered.

Hoidrious
couldn’t believe the situation he was in and how irrational Angus
was behaving. After all he had been assiduous to detail when they
had deliberated over the plan to overthrow Rex. How could Angus not
have realized as with everything in life, there is always a chance
things could go terribly wrong?

Angus had also
told him he wanted nothing more to do with him at that point, and
that Hoidrious shouldn’t contact him anymore. Hoidrious had
detected a true depth to his voice, one that suggested he
indubitably meant what he’d said.

Now to ensure
his own coven members wouldn’t be able to demand retribution for
the missing Elite warriors, Hoidrious had no choice but to distract
their thoughts by ordering a massive vampire hunt for Rex.

Hoidrious was
also very much aware if word ever came back they knew where Rex
was, he would have to try his hardest to delay their rescue of him
without suspicion being drawn he was doing so. This would have to
include a plan for his own escape, which he had yet to come up
with.

The plan would
undoubtedly involve him moving to the other side of the world, a
place of distant, barely-retained memories, mostly forgotten due to
the fact he hadn’t been back there since Christ’s crucifixion.

Then when he
arrived there he would have to spend an eternity watching over his
shoulder, scanning every shadow, every clump of grass, every bush,
and every tree line with the deepest levels of paranoia. He also
felt sure in his mind the day would come when he felt complacent
that he was safe from Rex and they would never find him. Only he
felt sure that it would be this day they bloody appeared.

Then with
screaming curses and flailing arms they would fly him back to the
stinking cells for gruesome tortures, and as an added retaliation
for his evildoings, they might even cut his arms and legs off and
leave him rotting in the corner as a ghoul.

An eternity as
a hapless ghoul with no arms and legs to even move, he felt sure
this might actually be even worse than hell itself.

---------

(Back in the cells with the story of
Hoidrious’ deceit firmly in your minds)

Mietioc was furious.

He suddenly spun around and began swinging
his swords violently through the air. Hoidrious ordered him to
stand down but his breath was wasted, as he demanded retribution
for the Elite warriors death.

The goons dived forwards and clashed their
weapons against his. Their swords produced massive sparks flying
everywhere as the archaic steel collided.

Mietioc‘s arms were massive from the years he
had been training hand-to-hand combat. His skills from countless
battles were also unbelievable. The goons who hadn’t seen combat in
over fifteen hundred years, although slightly rusty, they were
fully enjoying the experience.

(5am outside the traps room, in deep wintry
conditions. Devil’s Dyke, Brighton.)

After Kaine had burst out of the exit; for a
moment he had been taken back by just how bad the weather was. Then
with Jenny in his arms he had leapt up into the sky and roared
straight up vertically through the rain and sleet at just over 140
mph.

Across into the darkness and beyond there was
nothing between himself and the open sea.

He was heading for the piteously dark grey
clouds, all the time with his deep and stretched facial expressions
and as hard as he could, he was beating his massive wings that
spanned three meters either side of himself.

In the deep wintry months owing to the close
proximity of Kaine’s home to the sea, the weather was unpredictable
at the best of times, and this morning it was bordering on the
insanely terrible.

Even though the weather was different to
where Captain Ognian had died, that was on the other side of the
hill outside Kaine’s garage entrance. A place deeply nestled and
protected from the coastal weather some hundreds of feet below the
huge expanse of the South Downs.

As he was sky-rocketing up towards the
Heavens suddenly from beneath him in the darkness, faintly through
the extreme sound of the harsh wind, he heard the hallowed screams
of the vampires as they piled out of the exit after him.

Jenny was laid out in his arms, and his
intentions were to see if he could out run them, to gain enough
height that as he got into the clouds, hopefully he would be lost
from sight in the zero visibility conditions up there.

If he could then perfect maybe he could loose
them before they caught up with him, but if he couldn’t outrun
them, he had a second plan.

When he reached the cover of the hideously
dark clouds and was out of sight from them for just the miniscule
of time, he would spin around and dive-bomb them.

OK he had Jenny in his arms and she might
wake up, which would undeniably cause major problems with his
agility if she did, but until that moment he hoped he could kill
enough of them to make things fairer.

So far if his calculations were right, there
was at least sixty to seventy vampires airborne in his wake. This
figure, although it had reduced since his last estimation in the
garage by a significant amount, it allowed for the vampires who
were still searching his home for Regina and Becky. He presumed
they would be because over the past couple of days the women had
been out walking the dogs at varying times, so Longinus from his
hiding place must have seen them too.

Now though as he struggled to keep the rain
out of his eyes he had another major problem, he had no weapons. So
to start his crazy dive-bombing stunt he would be one armed and
hurtling towards them at deathly speeds, where for the fear of
being surrounded by them, he would have no possibility to slow down
either. So the combined speeds of his attackers and himself
travelling towards each other would be over 300 mph. As he passed
the first vampire he would have to steal a sword and he highly
doubted it would be possible considering the velocity he would be
travelling at. He felt the force alone of the snatch if he managed
to pull it off would almost certainly leave his only shoulder
available, considering the other was busy holding Jenny, severely
dislocated and unusable.

Wiping more rain from his face, he cursed
inwardly for not having taken a sword from the dead vampires in the
traps room. The ones who had a first-degree example of just how a
bear feels when it gets caught in those horrid Alaskan traps of
his.

Still in his defense he knew why he hadn’t
taken a sword. The door leading into their home was about to cave
in and Jenny was in her vegetative state. The sight of her had
really impacted on his brain. It had been sheer luck they had
managed to escape when they did. Kaine felt sure if they had caught
him in the room, they would have overpowered him and then succeeded
in their mission by killing them both.

With the dark ominous looking clouds almost
upon him, Kaine prepared himself should he have no choice left but
attack. So far it sounded like the vampires below were catching him
up and maybe he wouldn’t even reach the clouds before they caught
him.

His plan if he was able to steal a sword on
his first attempt would then take him on a mad man dive, plummeting
towards the ground and flying in between the vampires, vehemently
slicing at them until there was no time left before hitting the
ground. At the last second when death was looming and seemed highly
imminent, he would arch his back and suffer the most extreme G
force’s as his wings almost snapped from the pressure. Then with
the massive vibrations roaring through him, he would sweep across
the surface of the ground, and hoping he didn’t crash into anything
like a huge tree, he would race back up into the sky and head into
more dark clouds to repeat the process.

He factored he would need to doing it about
fifty times to achieve his target of over forty kills. Only he did
wonder if it would be possible due to the G’s he would have be
pulling. Could his body handle it even once, and if so, would his
body be able to handle a whole load more of them without him
passing out?

Now looking up, he realized that within
seconds he would be into them.

Adjusting his grip on Jenny to be sure he was
ready, he noticed her body sliding around on his arm. Looking down
briefly he was horrified to see that her stomach was absolutely
covered in blood.

As he started screaming at her to wake up,
and hoping to see her eyes opening again, suddenly his vision was
obscured by the thick dark clouds, he was now flying into. He
wanted to stop for her sake and to hover, but he knew she needed
more than that, by the amount of blood he saw she needed urgent
medical attention. Anyway if he did stop, the vampires would catch
up with them and then they would both be dead.

With the visibility now absolutely zero and
abandoning his dive-bombing plan, he slid his other arm underneath
her and kept flying up as fast as he could. He had to make it out
of the rain cloud he was obviously going through. If he could then
his new plan was to see where Brighton was and then dive back into
the dark clouds and fly in that direction, popping his head up
momentarily to check his bearings. He had to get her back to
Brighton general hospital fast.

Then suddenly he recalled Regina telling him
that after he had rescued Jenny, and as she was leaving the
hospital, the unforeseen had happened. The helicopters had crashed
into the hospital and blew up. The flames from both explosions had
roared up vehemently and hugged the contours of the building. She
said minutes later the buildings were engulfed in a huge
fireball.

With that thought in mind, he reasoned that
the place would be closed then, maybe even permanently too.

Scanning his mind for another hospital, he
cursed because the closest he knew of was twenty miles away in
Crawley. Then as he registered the memory of just how much blood
was over her stomach before they had gone into the clouds, the
harrowing thought that maybe she wouldn’t make it that far,
suddenly encroached on his brain.

Then as he passed through the top of the
clouds and his vision started coming back to him, he realized the
sky was vibrantly roaring in Heavenly colors. There were streaks of
gold, blues, greens and reds, all merging into one another and
creating the most stunning visual effects.

Looking down into his arms sadness then swept
through him as he realized she couldn’t be saved. She had parted
from this world, the sweet innocent child, his friend for such a
short time--was in fact dead.

How though, she was fine
when he left her in the room, and he was only gone a minute.
He thought.

Then as he examined the wound and saw it was
from a sword, all doubt escaped his mind and the answer hit him
like a freight train in the head. The vampire stuck in the bear
trap closest to her, he must have driven his sword into her side as
he was trying to close the door.

At that moment her death rocked him. He
craned his neck back forgetting the immediate dangers ensuing and
roared.

It was a loud, piercing roar from the core of
his being. The level of it had he been inside a glass greenhouse
somewhere would have almost certainly resulted in every pane
exploding into a myriad of pieces. It was beyond all fathomable
levels of primal, it was beyond even that, it was pure bone
chilling and unbelievable.

Then as he looked below and saw the evil
vampires hurtling out of the dark clouds, rage swept through him
and not by the gallon, but rivers of the stuff. His whole body
began to shake as it washed through him.

Then as his muscles tensed and he arched his
body into a dive position, suddenly he realized that something was
wrong.

He was shocked to find he was unable to
descend. Something he had never experienced before was happening to
him; he was strangely frozen in mid air and could go nowhere.

Looking up he noticed something that took his
breath away. Above him in the brilliantly bright Turneresque sky,
there were thousands upon thousands of angels racing down towards
him.