The Dark Messenger (2 page)

Abdiel insisted, ‘Our Father does not permit
this! You must stay here.’

Installis ignored him and vanished with only
one thing on his mind,

In the year 2099, the planet is in global
meltdown. There are wars breaking out everywhere, with two nuclear
explosions having happened in the past six months. People are dying
of widespread disease and suffering from vast shortages of food and
medicines. Businesses are closed, transport systems broken without
anyone prepared to fix them, huge storms, and seriously bad weather
because of the radiation in the skies. From all signs, it seems
that Nature is losing its grip.

The massive winds and thick
dark clouds that had begun over the past few years were carrying
deadly toxins from war-stricken countries into fresher lands.
People were growing sick everywhere, seas were mostly un-navigable
due to huge waves, and crops were not growing well in the fields.
What did grow could hardly be called ‘edible’. Hospitals were being
pushed to breaking point too, and the massive lack of medicines and
cures for new diseases left people
no choice but to
take chances at home rather than seek medical help. The
government
branded their front doors
with red
crosses to warn people from entering. History seemed to be
repeating itself with plagues reminiscent of that of the Black
Death, which had killed 60% of the European population hundreds of
years before.

There were no main airports
open. Plane crashes were a regular occurrence, and traveling
anywhere was a task. National trains still ran but journey times
had become far longer than it would take for a steam train
to
do the very same journey a couple of centuries
before. Main railway lines constantly blocked by fallen trees, and
dead bodies seemed to be scattered everywhere. Rats began to
overpopulate and disease found it had free passage to spread like
wildfire.

The import and export of
goods was far worse now than it had been in the past five hundred
years, and it was estimated to be non-existent except for the
occasional black market supplies that were brought in by drones.
Most of the roads could only be used in emergencies and the London
underground was declared a health hazard
.

Fuel prices had increased so much that the
use of generators to produce electricity was a real luxury, and
even wealthy people used candles for light and wood burners for
heating their homes. The weather was so cold all year round that
summer months hardly even saw temperatures rising above five
degrees.

Too many people and too many machines,
factories, pollution, and wars with nuclear weapons had turned the
planet into a dying world. Something had to be done, and on a large
scale, if there was any chance that Mother Nature might be able to
heal herself.

Vampires refused to let their planet be
destroyed, and decided to fight back.

It had been a particularly
cold night that night, and the flight from near Brighton to the
Tower of London had been hard going for Kaine,
who
had worn a facemask for the journey
.
He
hated
wearing it,
but his beloved wife
had insisted on him taking it with him to block out the disgusting
pollution that was everywhere.
He had flown the
40 miles,
passing over Crawley from
the outskirts of Brighton then onwards to Brixton before minutes
later arriving at the Tower of London itself.

As he reached it he circled
for a moment to take in the pitifully sad and extremely crazy
sights below him. There was so much violence that it reminded him
of London in the 16th century, just before the Great fire. People
had been so disgusting in that period of history. There were fights
everywhere, robberies, rape, prostitution; the way people had
chosen to live and the smell of the streets in those days was just
vile. Now though, just like then,
so
many houses
had red crosses on their doors too. It was almost as if it were an
extremely popular Christmas decoration, and everybody wanted to
display it. He couldn’t believe it as he scanned in all directions.
These crosses seemed to be everywhere.

Kaine was a huge vampire by human standards,
although in the vampire world he was fairly average. He stood 6ft
6” tall, a size that was dwarfed by many of his peers. What set him
aside from his own kind though was his broad muscular shoulders and
solid back. His legs were equally muscled; they appeared to be made
from stone because they were so hard. By all outward signs, it was
as if he was someone who had been intravenously feeding on protein
shakes and spending their entire life at the gym. Being a vampire
had its benefits; his strength was something else and his speed was
completely unbelievable. He could charge a full football pitch in
three seconds and bend reinforced iron bars like they were jelly.
His flying skills enabled him to fly up to 30 thousand feet and at
speeds of up to 140 mph, due to his perfectly formed wings that
spanned three meters either side of him in flight. He could take
off vertically and carry ten times his own body weight with no
alteration to his speed.

Even though the long-held secret of the
existence of vampires was now over, the last thing he wanted was to
be spotted, and was careful not to be seen.

For centuries their kind
had only been a myth. Stories were told and movies made, but no one
had any real evidence until now. A dark coven of vampires in the
north of England had gone on a frenzied attack in Edinburgh,
killing hundreds of humans without any care for the number one
rule: ‘
Only kill those who won’t be
missed, and NEVER be seen!’

The homeless used to be
easy prey for most, and the bodies were always easily disposed off
where they would never be found. Rumor had it that the coven
responsible for the atrocities were so furious with the
homeless
being too infected to feed from
that they decided to break the age-old rule and attack anyone they
saw. The sl
a
ughter was publicised; the local
CCTV footage in the town center had caught it all and it was then
broadcast live on television sets across the world for everyone to
see.

————————————

Kaine flew down and landed
in a dark street outside St Dunstan’s church before he tucked in
his wings behind himself and started walking.
At the end of the road, he
turned left
into the heart of London’s
East End.

Immediately he was confronted with crowds of
scummy people everywhere, some begging, some fighting. Police
whistles sounding from side streets, along with the occasional
gunshots. London was again a very unsafe place for most, and he
couldn’t help but laugh to himself as his shoulder thudded into a
big bloke. The man spun around immediately and started eyeing him
up for size. He ignored the fool and carried on.

‘Watch yourself, you freak!’ the bloke
shouted out behind him. It made Kaine smile as he continued ahead
brushing past more people. How lucky that guy had just been, he
thought. Had it been another vampire and not him, the man’s jugular
would have been severed, spraying everywhere like a fountain of
red.

As he got to
the end of the road, he could see the next one was in complete
darkness except for two street lamps that were barely flickering.
It looked like they were desperately trying to avoid the same fate
that the other lifeless lamps had just succumbed to.

His
primal senses quickly homed in on the silhouettes of two men who
were on the opposite side of the pavement some way ahead. The
taller of the two seemed to be making demands whilst the smaller
one was denying his requests. As he got nearer it was clear that it
wasn’t just an argument at all--it was actually a street robbery.
Then suddenly, like a flash of an eye, a blade reflecting the
moonlight appeared and darted fast into the smaller man’s chest. He
staggered for a second clutching at the wound, then his knees
buckled beneath him and he crashed to the ground. Instantly his
attacker set about him. Standing on his wrists, pinning them to the
ground, before rifling through the dying mans pockets.

Surreptitiously gliding undetected towards
his prey, Kaine flew millimeters above the ground, watching for the
possibility of other people. With no one around to witness it, he
grabbed the robber by his neck. Spinning him around, he slammed him
backwards extremely hard into the wall. Blood from the back of the
man’s head began squirting out fast as his skull cracked open from
the impact. The thick dark red liquid ran down the wall, chasing
different pathways, as it headed for the ground. Deep shock and
terror flashed across the man’s eyes as he blinked rapidly,
desperately trying to stay awake. Kaine’s fingers tightened on the
man’s throat as he attempted to scream. He could feel the gentle
ripple between his fingers as the man’s cries for help tried to
come out. His efforts to make the pathetic sound were futile
though, because his throat was squashed and his windpipe was
flattened as if a car had just driven over it moments before. Kaine
released the pressure slightly, just enough to allow him to breath
in a couple of gulps of air. He needed him to stay awake just long
enough to experience the more violent pain to come.

In traditional vampire style and with his
face eerily lit in the luminescent glow of the moon above, he leant
forward and pretended to bite his prey’s throat. The man thrashed
around desperately and then froze, as urine squirted out from his
trouser leg.

Kaine burst out laughing and pulled back
without even breaking the skin. He stared into the man’s eyes and
said,

‘I have never drunk human’s blood. It’s not
like deer’s blood, which is clean and healthy. Your blood is filthy
and impure, and it sickens me. Give my regards to Lucifer though,
won’t you?’ he said, as he punched his fist so hard into the robber
that it burst through the man’s sternum and flattened his heart.
Looking up into Kaine’s eyes, extreme terror raced through the
windows to his soul for but a second before he slumped forward,
dead. Kaine dropped the body and walked on into a side street.

As he walked he began to think about the
meeting he was just about to attend, and hoped he would be asked to
head any attack if there was one against the Scottish coven. He had
met them in the past and hated their leader Angus.

They must pay for their actions, he
thought.

Coming up to the corner, he
could see a street called Petty Whales, and just past that in the
distance was the Tower of London itself. He used to love to visit
the Tower by foot at night; the lights used to be so beautiful.
Now, though, it looked a whole lot different on the outside. There
was rubbish everywhere, and the once-beautiful, historically clean
brick walls of the castle had graffiti covering parts of them. One
message said
‘We need jobs, stop using
robots, give us back our jobs.’
He smiled
grimly at that, remembering the last 100 years and how technology,
had been invented by humans to help them but in fact all it had
done was hurt their very existence.

Walking on, he followed the pathway to the
right and made his way along to the edge of the castle, where he
could see the first guard tower and the secret camouflaged door
beneath it.

This coven was the head coven of vampires for
the whole of the UK and it was situated deep below the Tower
itself, right underneath all those humans who never had any idea it
was even there or that pure evil lurked so deep beneath them.

He stopped for a moment to take a look around
him and to make sure that there was no one in sight before reaching
in. He felt for the hidden latch and opened it. The door was about
six feet high and five feet wide, and no one had ever come close to
discovering it.

Standing just inside the door, bathed in
moonlight, were two guards holding spears vertically in front of
them. Seeing Kaine, they stepped backwards and disappeared into the
shadows, not daring to annoy him. He was well known here and had
been coming to this coven for at least five hundred years or so on
occasional meetings. The guards were told that there had been a
meeting arranged today and the most important vampires from
different covens were asked to attend.

The corridor ahead was extremely long and
dark inside, only lit by the odd bunch of burning branches that
were tightly bound together, wedged here and there and jammed
sporadically either side of the rock walls. There was hardly even
enough light from them to light a few meters, let alone the tunnel,
but they were actually more for ceremonial purposes because of the
meeting. He moved purposefully down the corridor into the darkness,
ducking his head to avoid hitting the six-foot-high ceilings, and
twisting his upper body to the side to stop his shoulders crashing
against the walls as he passed. Finally he saw the stairs, which
disappeared down into more darkness. As he began to descend, his
eyes immediately flicked over into night vision and the steps
became vividly clear, so clear in fact that it was as if they were
washed in sunlight.