The Dark Messenger (15 page)

‘The sword is locked,
though. We locked it with a spell so you could
not
use it,’ the priest
replied.

‘We want you to unlock it for us though,’ Rex
said.

‘And why would we do that for you?’ the
priest asked, curiosity coming into his voice.

Rex was furious.
What do I have to do, beg? No! That is not how I
get what I want. I’ve already told him a very good reason why they
should lift the spell. What more does this fool want from
me?
he thought.

His temper overtook any attempts at
diplomacy. ‘Because if you don't,’ he screamed, ‘Everyone will know
about your daughter Jenny—the one you dumped on the steps of an
orphanage when she was only a day old, many years ago! We have
travelled back in time and turned her into a vampire!’

The priest’s face showed no emotion, which
stirred a vague unease in Rex’s black heart.

He showed his last card. ‘If you refuse, then
two weeks from now it will be too late to turn her back, and the
vampirism inside will be permanent! She will then stay a vampire
forever!’ he shouted.

He then spat at the man, a gob of dark black
phlegm, which landed in the back of the priest’s raft.

The priest then turned, his face contorted
with anger and rage. For the first time, Rex was beginning to feel
unsure about this man in front of him.

‘What will your precious church think about
that?’ he added with a sneer.

‘I see,’ the priest said slowly, drawing out
the words. ‘Allow me to think for a moment.’ He tapped his chin
with a finger. ‘Would I be correct in thinking that you, Rex, have
stooped so low this time that you think that you could dare
blackmail the church? You lie too, because your plan is really to
kill millions of humans by releasing werewolves all across the
world, then to use the sword to kill the beasts so that they don’t
kill your pathetic species afterwards.’

Rex’s jaw dropped.
He knew! How could he know?

He was further astonished when the priest
then suddenly shape-shifted himself back into his true form.

The vampire almost fell off the raft when he
recognized him.

‘Installis!’

‘I knew you would be stupid enough to fall
for this plan,’ Installis said. He laughed—a sick, twisted sound,
before adding, ‘You brutally tortured my love Adina and then left
her to die outside her home in Jerusalem all those years ago! You
took her away from me, and now I have an eternity alone. I promised
her revenge and now I have it.

‘So you’ll kill me now, is that it?’ Rex
asked defiantly. ‘You do realise that the moment you step foot on
this raft, I will have your throat.’

Installis chuckled humorlessly and said, ‘You
will pay, but not with death. I have a far worse punishment.’

Rex knew he didn’t want to hear what would
come next.

‘You will stay trapped on that raft
forever.’

Turning, Rex screamed into the mist for his
warriors to come and save him.

‘This isn’t the priest! It’s a trick!
Attack!’

He listened for a few seconds, hoping to hear
the sound of their clanging swords and the beating of their wings
sweeping them through the mist as they raced over to save him. But
there was nothing, and as the seconds passed still nothing. It was
quiet all around him and no one came to save him.

Laughing at Installis’ foolishness at
thinking he could keep him here, Rex rubbed his hands together
before raising them above his head. He began to chant the most
demonic chant he knew,

‘Liostiuemun, vioermienium,
crenatium, mortisious, fladious, damninious
!’

As he said the words, he grew deeply
concerned at the lack of energy. He realized that he couldn’t feel
the dark spirits surging all around him, gathering in numbers,
their evil coming to him. He tried another as Installis
shape-shifted back into the form of the priest, laughing at Rex’s
efforts.

The seemingly-powerless vampire tried
another, then another, but no evil spirits answered his
calling.

Desperate not to be trapped
for an eternity on the raft, he dropped his hands and opened his
wings in an attempt to fly. But as previously warned, the mist
burst into flames all above him.
Dropping
to his knees instead, he thrust his hands over the sides of the
raft into the water, fully aware of the pain that he was about to
receive for doing so.

Two seconds passed before the seething pain
was too much for him. He ripped his hands back up out of the water,
screaming in agony as he looked down in horror at the sight. The
flesh had been stripped off almost everywhere, and he could see the
bones, stark and white.

His vampires waiting on the shoreline had
witnessed a different picture from what their leader had
experienced. They had watched as their leader’s raft had come to a
stop. Rex looked like he thought he was actually speaking to
someone, but they saw nothing; as far as they could tell, he was
alone. Installis had used his black magic to create the
illusion.

They all saw the mist burst into flames above
their leader and had seen him thrusting his hands down over the
sides. They saw him pull them back out again and stare down at
them, his face a mask of horror. Then they all stared,
unbelievingly, as Rex fell backwards over the edge, disappearing
down into the holy waters beneath—another vison induced by
Installis.

In a desperate attempt to save their master,
many of his Elite guards had flown high up into the sky before they
then flew down hard into the mist. Their wings burst into flames as
soon as they touched it, leaving them plummeting, wingless, to
their deaths in the deadly waters below.

A different plan was then formed. They
smashed down trees and strapped them together to make rafts. This
plan failed, as the straps moved as if alive and untied themselves.
The rafts separated into pieces before anyone could even step foot
on them.

Time was running out for the remainder of
Rex’s retinue. They knew the sun would be up soon and what that
would mean too. Death would be agonizing as the sun’s murderous and
deeply oppressive rays, then boiled and melted their skin.

The weather in 2099 was highly unpredictable
at the best of times, and that morning a heavy storm had brewed up
on their way home. The huge winds were the main reason that one
hundred and twenty six of them had died as they tried to reach the
safety of their coven. Realizing they were in trouble, they had
desperately looked for emergency shelter but then time ran out and
it was too late. The sun bore down on them like daggers from the
sky, slashing their bodies to pieces with its rays.

The following night, thousands upon thousands
of vampires returned to look for their leader. Other covens also
joined in the search.

Rex was gone!

Chapter 13 -
Realizing his Mistake

When Longinus was given the order by Rex that
he was being sent back in time, he was told that if he needed help,
he should ask for it and more vampires would be sent back to help
him. So he went to the tree and chiseled a help message into the
bark so that the vampires in the future from his own coven could
read it in their time. He had to think long and hard beforehand
though; it was a great weight looming in his mind as he considered
what the consequences might be. He felt that there was a strong
possibility that Rex might view this as failure of the mission. If
he failed, he knew what that could mean: Rex might order his death.
Then if by some stroke of genius he managed to escape, he knew that
he would be on the run from them forever. Hardly what he needed, he
thought as his blade hovered over the bark of the tree.

He was sure he had failed Rex--he had turned
the wrong woman, which was confirmed with what he saw through the
window with the one clear pane in it. He had clearly heard the
human woman say her name was Jenny, meaning obviously that the
other woman who he had attacked in Brighton’s high street was
clearly the wrong one. As he started to dig the blade deeper into
the bark, he hoped that when Rex got the message saying he needed
help, he would remember that he had told him to ask for it if he
needed it, and not to view his mission as a failure. Perhaps then
his life would be spared, but he doubted it.

He considered a new possibility. The mission
had never had a time limit to it. Maybe he should simply create a
lie, and never say anything about turning the wrong woman. He could
just say that there were vampires already there at the address that
Rex had given him, and that he fought them, but there were too many
and that he nearly died. Rex surely couldn’t be mad with him then,
could he?

He thought back to his arrival in this year,
and how it had all gone wrong from the start. He’d watched his
quarry as she had parted with a girlfriend. He’d then followed her
down a dark alley behind the address, with the idea that he’d turn
the woman and check her purse afterwards for identification. But
the attack had been sloppy; he had been surprised by four men who’d
heard her gurgling, and then jumped him as he was drinking her
blood. The woman had screamed as her senses came back to her and
then she ran away.

Longinus grimaced; if she had left her purse
behind, at least he could have checked her identification, but the
bitch had taken it with her.

After he had ‘subdued’ his attackers,
Longinus had returned to the address that Rex had given him, hoping
that she would return with her friend so that he could turn the
other woman just to be sure that he got the right one. He had
waited the whole of Sunday, but she never returned. Unwillingly,
then he had to stay longer, and had ended up being there the whole
night too. Whilst he had waited up in a tree, he’d started to
wonder if maybe the two women were together somewhere else, and
that they wouldn’t be returning there for weeks, if ever. He had
felt sure, though, that the one he had bitten could be needing
hospital treatment soon.

That’s when it had hit him. They had to be in
a hospital together somewhere, he felt sure of it.

In the early hours of the following morning
he had located the nearest hospital, and had managed to find a
great place to watch the main entrance from, just behind the
rubbish bins outside the A and E department. Apart from the really
vile stench emanating from the rubbish, it had been a good vantage
point because it was completely out of sight of the hordes of
people that came and went.

Ambulances had come in and out for hours, but
none of the patients had been the two women that he had wanted.
Just after 9am though, another ambulance arrived, and as its doors
were flung open he had recognized the woman being taken out of the
back of it. He could feel her energy, his vampire energy from her,
booming back at him. Then the other woman jumped out of the
ambulance and followed the rescue party inside.

After a few hours his new slave had been
moved from A and E, and he had sensed her going up inside the
building. He’d repositioned himself onto the roof, preparing to
attack. Then looking down through a clear pane of glass in a dirty
old window, he could see that his new slave was laying in a bed
below him, but unfortunately she wasn’t alone.

He had been surprised to see four armed men
were by her side. He hadn’t any doubts that they were armed,
because one of them pointed his weapon at his slave and was
demanding to know where her mate was. She had denied being at the
hospital with anyone, but the man with the gun had shouted out,
‘Don’t lie!’ Then he had said that they knew there was another
woman because the nurse downstairs had told them.

All this waiting for the woman, Jenny, had
started to annoy Longinus, and after several hours he’d became
slightly concerned about the sun, as he was running low on skin
wraps. He hadn’t wanted to leave though, for fear of losing the
women again. Luckily for him, though, the sun had begun to go down
and he hadn’t had to find refuge.

As it did though, he’d noticed that the men
had received a phone call. Then immediately afterwards they had
told his slave they now know where the other woman was, and that
they were going downstairs to hurt her. The man who had the gun in
his hand then grinned at her nastily before all of them hurried out
of the ward.

Longinus had known that if they returned with
the other woman, he wouldn’t be able to make a move with the men
there. He would have to pick his moment well, when they were
distracted or absent, before he leapt down, because he wouldn’t
fight anyone armed with weapons of a questionable nature.

No sense risking my
life—who knows but they may have silver bullets in those
guns,
he had advised himself.

Minutes had passed. Then, to his surprise,
the other woman walked into the room—alone. As he had prepared to
leap through the glass window, the men had reappeared in the room.
Furious at his attempts constantly either being blocked or just
seemingly always going wrong, he had to again just settle down and
watch. Just as he had started to settle back into waiting mode, he
had been horrified to see that the men were actually trying to kill
Jenny; one of them was trying to strangle her with a piece of
wire!