The Dark Messenger (30 page)

Chapter 23 - Gaining Access

Everyone gathered in the lounge, and Kaine
was thoroughly exhausted from all the fighting he had been doing
downstairs. The warriors outside had started digging through the
rubble below trying to find them, as he had suspected they would.
He didn’t care though, because in a few hours’ time the sun would
be coming up. To avoid being reduced to a pile of black ash by the
harmful UV rays, he knew they would have no options but to stop
digging and leave.

Jenny then Leapt up and said she was going
into the kitchen to clean up the dust. Becky threw her new Vogue
magazine down and went with her.

Kaine who was covered in dirt and sprawled
across the sofa with his feet up, had tried to switch his mind off
and relax, only he found he couldn’t stop thinking about
Raffious.

‘I can’t stop thinking about Raffious
either,’ Regina messaged him after reading his mind. ‘It was only
the other morning that you woke me up saying about the vision. So
much has happened since then too.’ She said with anger building in
her voice.

‘Something just isn’t right about all of it
though. Raffious had the cheek to come here and sit at our dinner
table, then to blame you for the vampire war in the future too. He
annoyed me when he kept saying that you had warned the Scots by
sending that email as well. I thought he was supposed to be wise
and know absolutely everything. If he does know everything, then he
must have known that this is where our long friendship ends. He
obviously doesn’t care either, because if he did he would leap back
in time and change things so we don’t fall out. As we are here
talking about it, I guess he hasn’t leapt back in time and changed
it, so he doesn’t care then. If that’s right then he must have been
using us all along. But what for?’ he asked, as he furrowed his
brow.

Regina nodded as she remembered the phone
call with the old boy on the morning of the vision, where he’d had
a condescending tone with her. He had also seemed extremely eager
to make the call quick, before saying he had to go as he had cut
her off. At the time considering all of it was most out of
character for him, she had been quite suspicious of it. Only
knowing that he knew about the attack too, it was clear to her now
that they didn’t even know the half of what the sick bastard was up
to.

Remembering another part of
the vision, where Rex was saying that Jenny didn’t live long past
2014. Kaine wondered whether he should tell Jenny, only considering
her reaction
earlier
when she had learned Rex’s warriors were looking for her,
maybe not.’ he thought.

‘No! Don’t! It will only scare her,’ Regina
messaged.

‘But what if it’s too late? What if it’s here
that she dies?’ he messaged but didn’t get as reply because the
floor began to shake.

Kaine leapt up from the sofa, and together
with Regina, they both ran across to the stairway and opened the
door. Looking down it was still the same as before, the dust
permeating the air and the visibility was almost zero. Closing the
door again, Kaine assured her that the sun would be up before the
warriors could dig a tunnel deep enough to hide all of them from
its murderous rays. She had smiled to him in reply but still inside
she couldn’t shake this nagging feeling she had. In her mind she
felt like somehow they were missing something.

Kaine was cautious not to let Regina read his
thoughts as he thought about how the warriors always seemed to be
unerringly digging in the right direction. They didn’t know his
house, and considering it was underground, how could they be sure
they were digging the right way. For a time he had thought there
was no way they would find them, but now being that sunrise was
still a few hours away, he was having second thoughts about it.

‘Did you say earlier that Raffious had blamed
Regina for sending an email, warning the Scots that my coven was
going to attack them?’ Arquin asked, hoping they would be more
receptive towards him now.

Regina turned and gave him a withering stare.
She had her suspicions about him, and felt there was something he
wasn’t telling them, only couldn’t place what it was.

‘Yes, he blamed me and I was very upset, but
what is any of that to do with you? Kaine, can’t we knock him out
and throw him downstairs in the dusty room? There’s something about
him I don’t like,’ she said.

Now seriously hoping what
he was about to say would have a profound effect on their decision
to not knock him out, he took a chance and said, ‘Longinus told me
that Raffious informed the Scots about Rex attacking them in the
future. It was when he was up there collecting his first piece of
the vase. Then there was something about Angus relating it to an
illegible email they’d received many years before, an email that
they couldn’t read except for two words,
attack
and
your coven
.

Regina’s glare had become quite oppressive to
say the least, but as she registered what he had just said, the
glare vanished and was replaced with a deep smile instead.

Realizing he had but a moment more to
impress, he added, ‘Longinus said that Angus told Raffious he’d had
a strong suspicion the attack he was warning them about, was the
very same one that the email was trying to warn them about
too.’

Regina then flung her arms around him in the
chair he was sitting in, and kissed him on the cheek.

As complete shock was coursing through
Arquin’s veins, she turned to Kaine and cried, ‘Raffious is a lying
bastard! So they never even received my fucking email then!’

Kaine walked over to Arquin and held out his
hand. ‘Thank you for telling us my wife was not guilty after all.
She would never have been able to forgive herself for sending that
email had you just told her they never received it.’

Then as rage overtook him, he screamed out ‘I
WILL KILL RAFFIOUS FOR THIS, That BASTARD had the cheek to sit at
our table and make you feel bad after cooking for him, when he knew
all along that it was him who had warned the scots. He must be
fucking sick in the head!’

The dogs were both extremely confused by
Kaine’s outbreak and started walking towards Arquin, snarling and
showing their teeth.

Arquin saw them coming and pushed himself
backwards in his chair, the legs of it digging into the floor as he
desperately tried to get away. Regina because of her excitement
couldn’t understand for a moment what he was doing. Then when she
did realize, she grabbed hold of the dogs just in time.

After a few minutes of silence, Regina then
said that when all this was over they should invite Raffious around
for dinner and she would poison his food. Then just before the
poison kicked in as he was sitting at the table, she would
apologize and say to him she hoped he could forgive her actions.
She predicted his reaction would be his usual mountain of words,
but then when she described the death the old boy would receive, it
was absolutely evil. Something about intense pressure in his head
as his lungs began to melt and his bones became brittle. Then as he
collapsed to the floor, she would give him half the antidote, not
enough to cure him though, but just enough to prolong his pain
whilst she stamped on his head.

Hearing her idea made Arquin feel quite sorry
for Raffious, but Kaine was somewhat amused at the notion of him
dying under her foot. He didn’t answer though because inside he was
still fuming.

‘Calm down. One day we will get our revenge
for sure,’ Regina messaged him.

Then Arquin said, ‘Yes, calm down. As your
wife just said, I’m sure one day you will get your revenge.’

Kaine went mad and whirled on him.

Regina had messaged that to me and hadn’t
said it aloud, so Arquin you are telepathic and have probably been
allowing the warriors downstairs from your messages, to pinpoint
our exact location!

Kaine grabbed him around his head and then
twisted his body and with a almighty hard yank, ripped it clean
off.

Now standing there with Arquin’s head in his
hands and blood spraying everywhere, he found he was lost for
words. He couldn’t believe what an idiot he had been to think
Arquin would have been telling the truth about him not being
telepathic.

Of course
not
.
Probably
most of what he had told them had been a lie too.
Then he wondered if the part about Raffious
trying to get the Trucale vase was true as well?

Jenny had seen the horrific moment when
Arquin had had his head ripped off and responded instantly by
vomited everywhere. Then with lines of sick dangling, she ran off
into the other room.

Raffious entered into the 2099 time period
preparing to get the last piece of the vase with Longinus. They
appeared just a few roads away from the Tower of London on a
freezing cold night. The sky was brightly lit with streaks of
ultraviolet colors as the moon fought desperately to penetrate the
heavy pollution.

Longinus couldn’t believe how much the future
had changed. He wondered if even a supernova’s rays might have
trouble blasting their way through the seemingly possessed sky
above him.

The biting wind was subzero as it screamed
all around and the trees with their empty branches shook violently,
casting long shadows that looked like demons ganging up as they
came towards him.

He felt extremely ill inside, and as he
swallowed he felt his throat resist, then reverse as it brought up
a mouthful of vomit.

As he looked about through the small trees
that were scattered here and there, he noticed that apart from the
twisting stretch of the murky river behind him, there was nothing
in this time period that suggested life at all. The buildings in
the distance, which once made the night into day with their
abundance of lights, were now just dark empty shells. It was as if
they had been left as a reminder of life existing before the deadly
diseases had swept through the land.

When economies had crashed and countries
were threatened with being sent back into the dark ages,
governments who had been desperate to restore order, found they
were overwhelmed with the astronomical numbers of dead to be
disposed of.

Since most funeral home employees had
already died of the diseases it ruled graveyard burials out of the
question, leaving burning of the corpses the only remaining viable
solution. Often where there were no housing alongside the rivers,
the toxic bodies were then stacked up high and a match was cast
upon them. After the heinous stench had passed and the bones were
reduced to ash, the winds blew what remained down river.

Longinus found that even in tonight’s strong
wind the smell of the corpses in their containers some fifty feet
away, was unbelievably disgusting as he tried to overcome his time
travel sickness.

Then suddenly from deep inside his gut there
was a massive surge, and he knew he was again going to be sick.
Desperately he tried to resist it but the attempt was futile. He
slammed his hand against his mouth but the force of vomit as it
rode up inside him was too powerful, and it shot between his
fingers.

When it had stopped he brought his shaking
hand up to his face and noticed there was coppery blood on it that
had been leaking down from his nose.

‘Move, you imbecile!’ Raffious shouted at him
from behind. He pushed Longinus forwards so hard that the warrior’s
knees buckled beneath him, and he collapsed to the ground with his
hands spread out in yesterday’s dinner.

‘Please stop. Please!’ he pleaded in a
fragile, broken voice. ‘If I die you won’t get the vase, and I feel
really ill.’

‘STOP!?’ Raffious shouted into the wind. ‘Are
you serious? You want me to STOP? After all my efforts planning
everything, you want me to just STOP.’

He blew out his breath in disgust, and kicked
Longinus. ‘Move your pathetic self! And wipe your nose too--you are
bleeding! Go get me that piece of the vase, or I might do something
that you will regret.’

Longinus snapped, ‘You won’t do anything you
old idiot. Would you risk losing the vase when we are only minutes
away from getting the last piece? No! So shut up and let me
recover. Keep prodding me and maybe I will die. Then you would be
buggered, wouldn’t you!’ He said as he twisted his head to look up
at the old fool.

Now exceptionally weak of mind and body he
found himself drifting into a partial daydream, blocking out the
sounds all around him as he began to remember back to when he was
watching Kaine’s hidden entrance in the hills for any movement. The
endless hours of waiting and not knowing if Rex would kill him for
turning the wrong woman had tormented his brain.

But still…the countryside had been so
beautiful. There had been a soft breeze off the ocean, which felt
clean and easy as it had flowed inside of him.

Unlike this place, in this time! He
thought.

Suddenly as he felt Raffious’ boot firmly
lodged in his side he was rudely jerked into coming back round, and
heard the whiny old bastard’s voice screaming for him to move.