The Dark Messenger (32 page)

‘He was very confused and not commanding his
thoughts properly. I know he fully understands that changing one
thing in time does not necessarily alter that which may be sought
to be changed.’

‘The Roman centurion Rex and his soldiers who
were directly involved in Christ’s crucifixion were all punished by
our heavenly father. They died an unimaginably painful death from a
sickness that befell them after the incident. As their souls
wandered the empty planes of time, Lucifer granted them eternal
life again, but as vampires. Installis was so angry when he heard
this that, against our wishes, he left Heaven and came to Earth,
intent on revenge against your species.’

Jenny wondered if she too would have done
something similar, if somebody close to her had been murdered.

‘My darling Jenny, please do not think that
way. Raffious is on an evil path for revenge and has become much
like Lucifer, lost in his ways. He is now in our eyes and by his
actions against humanity, known to us as The Dark Messenger.’

Suddenly the floor began to vibrate again,
but this time it was much louder. The angel held his hand up and
the noise stopped.

‘No turning back now,’ Longinus said to
himself as he heard the mechanism inside the secret door on the
Tower of London beginning to turn. He desperately hoped that those
inside would have a means to killing Raffious.

They must
have
, he told himself.
Covens are always practicing dark evil rituals. They had to
know what to do with that old fool.

As he stepped inside, he
hoped that they would be forgiving of his own crimes against them,
but doubted they would. With relief, he quickly remembered the
code,
Viatis Onertiunes
. He didn’t know what it meant, but since Rex had told it to
him, it must have meant something very important.

As the door swung back,
standing there in front of him and bathed in moonlight were two
guards. Both of them stepped one pace forwards, holding long spears
pointed out towards him. Longinus noted that the weapons stood
about five feet off the ground and had thick wooden shafts.
Nothing’s changed here,
he thought to himself.

They gaped at him for a moment.

‘Longinus, how are you back here? Did you not
go with Vius to kill the woman?’ one of them asked inquisitively
before shooting him a scornful look.

‘I did, but…well, it’s a story for your
leader. Who is in charge now, by the way?’ he inquired, wondering
which one of the elder vampires had assumed the role since Rex had
vanished.

‘Hoidrious has looked after the decisions
since we lost Rex. He has assumed command on a temporary basis. One
hundred years, and if Rex has not returned by then, another vote
will be taken,’ one of them said.

Then the guard to his left reached past him,
grabbing hold of the main door and slammed it shut. As he did, the
strange feeling that Longinus had been having ended abruptly; a
feeling as if something in his wake had been following him, and
watching his every move.

‘What is that all round your mouth? It looks
like sick,’ the other guard said, pointing at his face.

Embarrassed, Longinus quickly wiped it away.
‘I have been ill,’ he replied.

The guards exchanged puzzled looks, knowing
vampires almost never got ill, and if they did something must be
terribly wrong.

‘Can you take me to Hoidrious immediately?’
Longinus asked. ‘It concerns Rex.”

From their disbelieving
looks, Longinus knew that he had to tell them the rest or end up
dead. ‘I have just been with him, and he told me to tell you
Viatis Onertiunes.
’

As soon as they heard those two words, there
was an instant change in them. It was as if suddenly nothing was
more important than his speaking with Hoidrious. Turning round
immediately, one of them said, ‘Follow me,” and stormed off down
the corridor into the darkness beyond. Longinus followed,
remembering that he had to be quick or Raffious might become
suspicious and possibly leave.

Longinus knew that if Raffious disappeared
because he took too long inside, Hoidrious would kill him slowly,
probably the slowest a vampire had ever died. Once he had told
Hoidrious that he only joined their coven as a spy, he was in great
danger until Raffious was caught, so every second counted.

Finally after descending 80 floors beneath
the main entrance, they stepped out and

exited the stairwell and turned left,
entering into a short corridor some forty feet long.

Ahead of Longinus stood a massive stone door
that he recognized as being the entrance to the main hall. The door
had markings carved all over it that were faded from hundreds of
years but were still just about visible. They were drawings of
vampires doing battle with demon’s, with humans being dragged
kicking and screaming behind them.

‘Wait here,’ he was told, as the guard in
front vanished through the door.

-----------

Outside, Raffious was starting to have second
thoughts about waiting. He knew it was seriously dangerous, even
for a man of his powers. Maybe he should abandon the vase and just
save himself, he thought.

If he did, he felt sure that a holy war would
start between the vampires and the Church, as soon as Jenny was
destroyed. He thought that maybe he should jump back there to
Kaine’s and kill her himself. A holy war might actually be the
answer; he could relax and watch the vampires be taken out by the
religious crusaders. He felt sure that the Church would win,
killing them all.

But what if they didn’t?

Then he told himself,
‘
No!’ Stop being paranoid. Everything will
work out fine. Longinus wouldn’t have come this far if he wasn’t
going to get the last piece of the vase.

When they had arrived together outside the
Tower of London, he had tried some of his dark magic as he watched
Longinus walking up to the main door. He had created a third eye,
and the darkness was following Longinus. Raffious could see and
hear everything all around him as he had approached the secret
entrance. But as soon as the door had been slammed shut, apart from
the spell had mysteriously stopped working, he had also suffered
from a searing pain in his head, one so bad he felt sure it would
leave him with a massive headache.

He couldn’t understand it though; he knew
the spell extremely well and it had never failed him before. Often
he had used it to listen in on Kaine and Regina in their house, and
there had never been any problems then.

At least none like
this
, he thought.

Looking over to the doorway where he had last
seen Longinus, he started to get quite concerned that too much time
had passed, and as he watched he began to seriously think about his
own self-preservation.

‘What’s keeping that cretin?’ Raffious said
to himself. He figured that if hoards of vampires came out charging
at him, he would have no choice but to vanish into another time to
escape them.

‘Damn!’ he muttered, suddenly thinking how
stupid he had been to chance everything on Longinus getting the
last piece of the vase for him. If they did come out in force and
he had to leave, he felt sure they would move it and then as a
result, he might never get another chance to get the thing.

-----------

Inside the coven, Hoidrious had just walked
up to Longinus.

‘How are you here?’ he demanded as he
signaled to his guards to surround Longinus. They left no spaces;
their long swords were in hand, dangling loosely by their sides,
and the tips were gently scratching the dirt beneath them.

Longinus explained the whole story, stressing
Raffious’ powerful dark magic and his time-shifting skills. He also
warned Hoidrious that the magician was waiting outside for the last
piece of the vase. He told the coven leader he had only really
joined their coven as a spy and that he had been working for
Raffious who had made him do it. He then explained he had left the
Scots, because he had been offered the gift of time travel, into
the future by him.

As he finished, Longinus swallowed deeply as
he looked up into Hoidrious’s eyes, hoping he would have mercy on
him.

Hoidrious was furious though and lunged
forwards, grabbing him by the throat before lifting him off his
feet and then running him back into the rock wall.

‘Wait! Wait, listen!’ he
gasped. ‘I saw Rex in a prison earlier, and the time shifter
outside is the one who has him. Raffious is waiting for me outside.
Rex told me to tell you
Viatis
Onertiunes
!
And he said tell Vius not to get Jenny
anymore, else the church might start a holy war.
’

Hoidrious paused for a
second, looking shocked. The two words Longinus had just uttered
was
from
an ancient vampire dialect
which was not spoken anymore. Only very old coven members actually
knew its meaning. The guards at the entrance had only recognized it
as being ancient. The reason they had reacted the way they had was
simply because of the dialect. They had assumed that, since it was
of the old language, it had to be of the utmost
importance.

‘Viatis
Onertiunes,
’
meant ‘I am alive, but not for
long,’ and it was clear to Rex’s replacement that Longinus might
actually
be
telling the truth.

After releasing his grip on
Longinus’ throat, and dropping him to the ground, Hoidrious
suddenly closed his eyes and held his hands high above his head as
he chanted some strange words, ‘
omniatis
viotieros gladiousternous daintes
.’

Then when he had finished repeating them, he
dropped to his knees and remained this way, silent, for a few
seconds.

Suddenly, a strange-looking
vampire ran into the room
. He
was dressed in old
dark-brown leather and
was
holding a long wooden
bow in one hand and in the other
,
apart from his archery glove
was a
ominous looking, luminescent green
arrow. It appeared to have
strange gases emanating from it. The end
of it was featherless too, but because of the speed it travelled
at, where the feathers should have been, instead the shaft was
knuckled to prevent it going through its victim, upon
impact.

Nervous and not
particularly wanting to, but having had the guards witness
Longinus’ previous treacherous statement, he knew had no choice,
Hoidrious said, ‘Dracus, we must be quick! We have only one chance;
outside a time-shifter waits, and we must capture him.
The swine
has Rex alive in a prison somewhere.’

As he heard
Rex’s name, not even an ounce of shock passed the bowman’s face,
instead he simply nodded.

‘Yes
,
my
master, it will be a pleasure. Consider it done,’
he said
but not in the vampire language Longinus
understood. He spoke in the old archaic language his peers
knew.

Dracus was their best
bowman, and his skills were immense. He could somehow even bend his
cursed arrows so that they flew around corners. Each would fly so
fast that most spells couldn’t stop them as they flew through the
air. The arrows he used were made from the skin of snakes that were
over a thousand years old. The fangs
of the slithery creature were
bound
tightly
together to form
their tips. The covens most powerful dark magic had cursed these
arrows. Whoever they hit would lose their powers and become
paralysed regardless of their knowledge in the darkest of
evil.

Another guard appeared, holding the other
half of Christ’s Trucale vase in his hands. Hoidrious passed it to
Longinus as Dracus suddenly vanished in front of him. Longinus
could only stare; he had never seen a vampire do that before.
Despite the seriousness of the present situation, he couldn’t stop
himself from wondering what skill that was.

Time-shifting like
Raffious, or something else
? he
thought.

Hoidrious stood a foot from Longinus and
stared deeply into his eyes. ‘Take the piece of vase out to the
time shifter. If this plan fails and he escapes, you had better
hope that you can fly fast, because if he does get away, there will
be another arrow headed for your brain.’

-----------

Outside, Raffious was sure that the plan had
failed.

How long should I
wait?
he thought. If Longinus had told
them about him, then the longer he waited, the more time it would
give them to summon spells. They might have something he didn’t
know about, and then if so he might be killed or even worse, he
might end up rotting in their cells.