The Dark Messenger (12 page)

She mused on their shared
history. They had been mates for years, and now Becky had this
horrible disease.
Poor love—she’s
only in her thirties, like me. Now her life, and
mine, will probably be ruined, s
he
thought. Tears began running down her cheeks.

Jenny sighed and put a warm hand over Becky’s
cold one. ‘I’m sorry Becky, but I’m not going anywhere. You are
ill, and these people are specialists, coming to diagnose you
properly. They are not going to hurt me,’ she said, sniffling and
trying to wipe the tears away from her face.

Suddenly the lift doors in the other room
opened again, followed by the sound of feet approaching on the hard
ward floor.

‘Wonder where she went to, Geoff.’ A man’s
gravelly voice was followed by another man’s, who replied, ‘Don’t
know, but they will be here soon, so we need to find her.’

Jenny was slightly shocked by the tone of
their voices, but smiled again as she realized that they might not
be the specialists after all, but were obviously hospital staff.
Their conversation merely meant that the specialists would be here
soon.

‘Get out of here!’ Becky
said in a hoarse whisper, biting off every word. Jenny sighed and
looked away from her mate. She was really trying to ignore her
warnings, but it wasn’t easy.
Poor dear is
obviously not well and quite confused,
she
thought.

‘
Jenny,
get the fuck out of here!
’ Becky
insisted. She struggled ineffectively with the handcuffs
again.

‘Becky, babe, you are sick and obviously need
help. These people coming are hospital people, they are here to
help y…‘

At that moment, the door opened and four men
walked in. Jenny sucked in her breath, and her blood ran cold.

They clearly had nothing to do with the
hospital at all. She was horrified at their appearance, and
suddenly Becky’s voice saying they were going to hurt her echoed
around inside her head. She tensed up and backed away as far as she
could. Beside her, she could hear Becky whimper.

The men were indeed skinheads, easily 6ft in
height. They wore smart blue suits and a lot of gold rings. What
frightened her the most were the tattoos that crept up each man’s
neck. To Jenny, they looked like football hooligans dressed up for
a court case!

‘There you are!’ one of them said as he spied
Jenny. His smile was nasty, revealing dirty, nicotine-stained
teeth. As he approached her, another man followed him. They
sauntered slowly, menacingly. The other two men stayed standing by
the doors, their arms crossed.

Too late, she realized that Becky had been
right—she was in mortal danger. How could she have been so stupid,
considering everything, not to have believed her?

She turned and ran as fast as she could
towards the fire door, slamming her hands down on the push bar as
she reached it.

Her heart made a sickening twist within her
as the door refused to budge. She rammed the bar down again, but it
remained closed. The bar wobbled as if the mechanism wasn’t
connected inside.

Jenny turned around, shaking with fear. She
was trapped.

One of the men approaching started laughing
as he reached inside his suit jacket. Jenny’s heart stuck in her
throat as she saw what it was: a length of black wire. He slowly
started to tighten it between his fingers, with the same evil leer
on his face.

‘Don't worry, it won’t hurt for long, trust
me!’ he said.

Jenny screamed. She turned again and started
banging her fists desperately on the fire door, crying out for
somebody to help her. Then from behind she suddenly felt the wire
being wrapped around her throat, and her breath was cut off.

Becky watching in horror from the bed
suddenly became consumed with anger. This man was trying to kill
her best mate! As the anger filled her, she suddenly felt a
strange, massive overpowering sensation. Then as her eyes rolled
back deep inside her head, everything went black.

When they reappeared a second later, it
wasn’t the same Becky anymore.

Normally the process of transformation left
the human fighting the vampirism inside, and after many days of
sickness, only then did the need come for new vampires to finally
feed. They would be weak, but the need to kill something and drain
its blood would be massive. Becky’s transformation had by no means
finished properly; she didn’t even have the lust for drinking blood
yet. However the wild anger that was inside her, brought on by the
human emotions of seeing her friend about to be strangled, had
somehow triggered the advanced stages of her transformation.

Now it surged through every vein in her
body--the overwhelming need to kill everyone in this room. Arching
her head back, she roared--an unearthly primal sound. Becky had
gone, and this thing inside now had full control.

Jenny was frantically kicking back at the man
who was trying to strangle her, but then she felt her legs stop
responding. Her body fell limp, and her vision was slowly fading.
Suddenly the horrible realization raced through her brain that she
was dying.

Becky, with her new vampire strength surging
through her, snapped the handcuffs like they were made of plastic.
She launched herself across the room at Jenny’s attacker. As she
did, the tubes connecting her to the machine behind broke, but not
before pulling it off the metal stand that it was sitting on. As it
hit the floor, the front screen smashed and glass went
everywhere.

‘Geoff, watch out!’ one of the men
screamed.

The man with the wire let go of Jenny and
spun round. She had been suspended in the air but now as her feet
touched the ground, her legs gave way beneath her and she fell
forwards, clutching at her throat. Even though the wire was gone,
she couldn’t breathe! Her neck had a huge red mark running round
it, which disappeared on both sides underneath her hair.

The two men by the door had charged forwards
to help, but Becky was already at the man with the wire. Before he
could do anything, she had thrust her claw-like black fingernails
so hard into his neck that they pushed straight through his skin,
burying themselves deep inside. Blood began spraying everywhere
from the wound and he dropped to his knees, grabbing at his own
throat. Becky’s fingers had severed his main artery, and blood was
squirting through his fingers. Then a moment later he fell
forwards--dead.

Becky had stood there watching him in his
death throes, oblivious to the fact that now his mates were right
behind her. One of them managed to get his arm around her neck from
behind, and was deadly intent on strangling her. The other two men
saw their opportunity and screamed at him to hold her steady, but
even with his size he found that he couldn’t. It didn’t matter
though, because the punches started anyway, distracting her from
trying to get out of the neck lock that she was in. Many hard
throws landed square in her face. Furious, she hissed back at them
and swung her legs up in front of herself, before viciously lunging
forwards. As she did, the men moved to avoid being kicked. But one
of them mistimed his move and Becky’s feet hit him straight in his
stomach. Instantly he doubled up with pain.

‘Bitch!’ the other man shouted. He stopped
punching her and quickly reached behind himself. He pulled out his
gun, a Browning 9mm pistol.

The men’s orders had been to hold Becky there
until their chopper arrived and kill her mate, but that had all
changed when Geoff had been killed. They were all good buddies and
had worked together in the secret government vampire-testing
department for years. Now seeing him dead they were going to kill
her too.

(Dec
18
^th
,
2 a.m. Air temperature: Freezing)

An old man finds shelter inside a huge rock
fall a few hundred feet up the side of a mountain pass, waiting,
hoping for news that his children were successful in their battle
against the undead. All around him as far as he can see are
mountains of colossal size, and below, as if it were their private
playing area, a huge barren wasteland looms.

The full moon is bright this evening,
washing the landscape well in its eerie cotton-candy glow, as a
biting wind whips up flurries of arctic snow. In front of him is a
small fire that he was finally able to light after searching
painfully for dry timber. Its flame barely taking hold, and its
faint heat does nothing to lessen the bitter cold he feels
within.

With deep concern the man is sad that his
children are two hours late returning from battle. A sick feeling
starts to take hold inside his heart as he begins to doubt if any
of them will ever return.

Standing in front of the
fire, he looks outside but sees nothing. As he walks out from his
rock shelter into the wind, his clothes begin to flap as he holds
his hands above his eyes, desperately scanning the horizon. Minutes
pass; he feels so cold, and not just because of the weather. He
turns and walks back to sit down in front of the flames.
A
s he does so, he starts to think
about how much he will miss them if they never return.

***

Suddenly his mind is disturbed from thought,
as biting cold wind races through the gaps in the rocks behind him.
It sends a chill straight through him as the fire also protests.
The flames roar up aggressively, violently, as if in deep protest
at the unwanted intruder.

Shivering deeply, he leans
toward the fire and gently places another log into the
flames.
As
the damp wood lands in the
furnace, bright orange sparks burst up high into the sky. The fire
crackles and pops, spitting vehemently in disgust.

As he holds his hands up in
front of the heat to warm them, he gradually begins to drift back
into the dream state that he had been in moments before. He
remembers the first time one of his children
had
opened its eyes, after reading out the spell that had created
it.

***

He had been shocked at first, because it
never moved--not a stir, absolutely nothing--until a few minutes
had passed. He had thought the experiment a failure until he saw
the chest of the creature rise and fall with even breathing. More
time passed and still it had lain motionless on the rocky ground,
with only the breathing and nothing more.

He had then knelt beside it, slowly lowering
his hand down and letting his fingers glide across its shimmering
grey fur. As he had looked down at its face, the eyes had opened
suddenly and the beast roared. Startled, he had tried to run, but
had slipped and fallen onto his side. Without trying to stand
again, he had edged himself backwards across the floor. As he did,
his eyes had locked onto those of his creature. He couldn’t look
away as its lips raised dust in front of its nostrils, then gently
blew it across the floor.

The creature had been the first to move,
pulling itself up onto its huge feet with a sigh as it found its
balance for the first time. It then walked slowly towards him. He
had frantically tried to remember the spell to stop it, but somehow
his mind had gone blank.

He suddenly felt something, a pressure.
Looking down with terror, he saw the beast’s razor-sharp claws
gently resting on his thigh.

Then it started to lick him with its
rock-hard tongue before it laid down peacefully next to him on the
floor. He had smiled to himself knowing that his first ever child
had been born.

***

Suddenly he is disturbed from his happy
memories and awakened from his deep thought by a scream outside,
somewhere below on the valley floor. Standing up quickly, he steps
over the fire, and runs outside the shelter to look. He is
panicking, because the sound he heard was the same one he sadly
remembers from another child that he had lost many years
before.

Again she screams, and this time as he looks
down in to the bushes below, he can see her glowing red eyes.

‘
I’m coming!’ he screams as
he runs down the slope, heading for her.

Reaching the bushes where
she lies
,
he is horrified at what he sees.
His child’s face is badly slashed and she has a horribly broken
jaw.
Her
body is shaking violently from deep gashes, and he knows
there
is absolutely nothing he can do. Her
hind legs are
badly
severed and blood is pumping
from her stomach all across the rocky floor.

Suddenly she screams, blood
dripping out her nose and mouth, her back
arched and her tongue thrust out. She tries to crawl, he tries to
help, but she suddenly drops flat to the ground. Then, with much
regret he drives his dagger into her brain. The hardened steel
thrusts clean. Her pain released, she lies dead upon the
ground.

No more of his werewolves manage to reach home that night,
and inside he knows that the vampires had won tonight’s battle.
Bitterness mixed with anger sweeps through his veins, as he tries
to think of another way he can get his revenge.