The Dark Messenger (38 page)

‘Go on, tell. I'm curious and you can’t keep
me in suspense. What is it, darling?’ she coaxed.

‘Oh, okay. Well, I thought how Raffious had
tricked everyone so much, and if he really was that devious and
cunning, how do we know the angel wasn’t really Raffious? He has
impersonated a priest supposedly, so why not an angel?’ she
reasoned.

Regina couldn’t answer, as she suddenly found
herself in a new place of confusion in her head. She had only just
settled on the decision not to accept the angel’s offer, and now
this, which might change everything once again. She had to agree
that it was a possibility they had to consider, what with
everything that had happened so far and all.

‘I will ask Kaine and see what he thinks. You
have got a good point though,’ she said, smiling back at her.

Her thoughts turned to her husband.

‘Darling can you come here? Becky has just
brought something up that I think you should hear,’ she messaged,
hoping that she had caught him in time before he had got into his
birthday suit and started washing himself in the shower.

‘What’s up?’ he messaged. “I am half
naked.’

Regina hadn’t had her morning lovemaking, and
hearing that her lover was about to be naked in the shower somewhat
teased her. All she could think about doing was ripping her clothes
off and running in there to join him. She didn’t know when they
might ever get another chance to be intimate together.

Maybe they wouldn’t, if he
decided to accept the angel’s stupid offer,
she thought.

‘I am turning it down, baby,’ he messaged as
he read her mind.

‘I’m glad,’ she replied.

Regina didn’t normally take kindly at all to
someone deciding something for her without asking her first.
Obviously this time, though, Kaine had done exactly that. She was
okay with it this time; she actually felt a huge weight rise off
her shoulders, and she was immensely grateful they didn’t have to
decide together on this one. Normally, though, her husband would
never do that. It was one of the things that made him so very
special—he confided in her about everything.

‘What did you want to ask me anyway?’ he
messaged.

‘Becky just brought up the possibility that
the angel might have really been Raffious trying to trick us,’ she
messaged.

There was a pause as Kaine considered
this.

‘That’s such a good point! Tell her I will
think about it and see if there’s a way we can prove it. I would
have trouble with that though, simply because he knew our thoughts
and he was so gentle. There was so much love radiating off him as
he touched my forehead. I doubt anyone could fake that,’ he
replied.

As she finished the messaging she turned
around, and Becky could tell that she had finished telepathically
talking to Kaine by her facial expression. In the few days she had
been there, she had learned how to realise when they were sending
messages and when they weren’t. She was hoping that very soon she
might learn how to use the free messaging service too.

‘So what did he say?’ Becky asked, wondering
if he hadn’t just laughed, and said that she was being silly and
needed to pull herself together.

Regina told her, and then said, ‘Anyway, we
have both decided we aren’t accepting his offer, so I wouldn’t
worry.’

As she finished the sentence though, suddenly
from beneath them, the noise started again.

‘Damn!’ she shouted, suddenly remembering
what the angel had said: ‘If you do decide that you aren’t going to
accept our offer, Heaven will know, and time will start again
immediately, and before the full day is out.’

Chapter 32 – Pain is coming

(In the cells again, under the Tower of
London)

If anyone had been around to look in through
the bars of their cell, it would have seemed that the two of them,
Raffious and Longinus, were merely statues….

Raffious was still in the
position he had been in when Longinus had originally picked him up
from the floor. He was sitting on the far left, with his bum on the
bench and his feet on the ground, facing forwards. His hands were
on his lap and his long, now almost grey-looking beard, was curled
up like a cat on his knees. The old boy’s facial expression held a
solemn, almost lifeless look as he gazed forwards. If someone had
walked up to him and slowly waved a hand in front of his glistening
tiny eyes, saying something like, ‘
Earth
calling Jupiter, is anyone home?’
It was a
fifty-fifty shot that he would reply. Most of the time he was in
deep thought.

The only times he did truly
stir was either when he was going to start begging Longinus to
remove the arrow again, or to promise to save the vampire from
being trapped in his,
all in the mind,
deeply murky and very misty swamp.
Apart
from those times, he never stirred, even when he was relieving
himself. The only sign that he was doing this was the sight and
smell of the urine dribbling down his legs.

It was Longinus’ role, whenever Raffious
indicated that he was thirsty, to scoop up the filthy water off the
floor by cupping his hands and then holding it up to the old man’s
lips. In the offering, there often bits of hair, blood, grit from
the rock floor beneath, and dried spit. Longinus would remain
motionless in front of him, allowing the nasties to sink to the
bottom whilst, with his lips puckered, Raffious would suck the top
surface in.

Longinus had realised their system had its
flaws. It was hardly a rock-solid water purification method, but
what could he do? It was all they had, given their grim
circumstances. This was the reason why, as lumps of nasties were
sucked into Raffious’ mouth, he never grinned to alert him of the
fact. Instead, he just kept an expressionless face and sniggered
within.

When not assisting Raffious, Longinus sat in
his usual position, with his back wedged in the right hand corner
of the cell and his legs outstretched as far as he could. The tips
of his toes stopped millimeters from touching the old fool in front
of him. When he tired of that position, just for the sheer
excitement of it, he would bring his knees up and gaze for hours at
the bench between the gaps in his legs. Throughout all of this, he
waited for the misty swamp to reappear, as he unfortunately knew it
would, and without warning.

About every hour or so, he might get the
slightest build-up in saliva, if that, then suddenly he was there
again, standing waist-deep in dead bodies, with thick dark mist all
around him.

Then as the mist cleared but slightly, dark
silhouettes of things, beings, shapes came into view, approaching
surreptitiously from all sides. At the same moment that he realised
they were from hell, then suddenly all the bodies beneath him came
alive and started moving. They reached up for him, grabbing at his
clothes as they tried to hold onto him.

With his mind full of sudden fear, Longinus
stepped back forcefully, his eyes darting everywhere. Beads of
sweat pouring down his face, he struggled to break out from the
hundreds of hands that were now clamping on to him.

Then in the distance, coming from all sides,
he could hear the muffled words of someone he knew but strangely
didn’t recognise.

Spinning around and around, he realised he
was surrounded, and as the demons got closer and closer, so close
in fact that he could see their stretched-out sinister faces with
hollowed eye sockets containing only darkness, he started to
panic.

At the last second, before they got him, then
with a jolt there he was again back in the cell. He was on all
fours, with lines of non-clear drool making rainbows to the floor.
The bloodied substance was dangling, not slipping, just bouncing
backwards and forwards gently as the ends slithered in the dirt
beneath him.

Only then did he truly recognise whose voice
he had heard calling to him: it was Raffious’.

Whilst being in the dream, or vision, he was
never aware of having been there before, and had to re-experience
the whole macabre nightmare over and over again. Only when he came
round did he add it to the list of previous ones.

Every time, they were exactly the same. It
was his body reacting to the lack of blood of recent, and if the
stories in his world were anything to go by, it was his body
changing into something all vampires feared more than death itself:
a hapless ghoul. No mind, no logical thoughts, licking the floors
for anything to fill its belly. A hideously vile beast that would
somehow find itself in a graveyard crypt, eating flesh from human
bones for all eternity.

Longinus determined that that wasn’t his
future. He suddenly leapt up and charged towards the bars. He had a
plan—a plan of escape!

------------------------

Suddenly coming from the end of the
passageway, at the same time his feverish hands gripped the bars,
was the sound of beings exiting the stairwell and approaching.
Longinus counted the footsteps and estimated that it sounded like
three.

Raffious mumbled his concerns and asked who
was coming. Longinus waited without answering, even though the old
bastard had once again saved him from the swamp.

Longinus looked up the passage with his face
firmly pressed into the bars to get a good look. When he did see
who was coming, he nearly shit himself. It wasn’t just the jailers,
as he had expected. This time it was obviously much more serious,
because Hoidrious was with them.

Turning around like a child caught out of bed
by his parents, Longinus leapt back onto the bench and resumed his
statue-like pose from before.

‘Who is it, damn you!’ Raffious cursed, to
which Longinus hissed furtively, ‘Hoidrious is coming! Shut
up!’

Raffious had expected this moment. He knew
that it had to come eventually.

But why had they waited a
whole week without addressing me?
he
wondered.

Surely on Day One of his capture, they would
have tortured him to get Rex’s secret whereabouts, which was on a
raft bobbing up and down on the Bewl Waters reservoir.

Why hadn’t they?

Then the fear had loaded into his brain as he
wondered if this was not, in fact, Judgement Day. Pay or play, so
to speak. Give them Rex or they would come in and hack off some
limbs or maybe an eyebrow or two. Then leave for a month and come
back to do more when the pain had finally begun to subside, as the
stump from the missing limb had gradually stopped squirting blood
and then healed.

He was well aware of how one would scream as
he was being dissected. The sad memory of the blacksmith’s brutal
death now flashed before his eyes. The man whose services he had
acquired to fabricate the silver sword, and then had in turn
fabricated a plan so that he would never have to pay him.

After being shown the thing, he had taken it
in his grasp and tried it for weight between both hands. It had
been beautiful— about two meters in length, double-edged, and razor
sharp.

The blacksmith had been waiting behind him
for his reviews whilst, like a kid, Raffious had played out his
fantasies. He had completely believed, for just that moment in
time, that he was a formidable warrior, a gallant knight taking on
some nefarious beast.

After watching his client vehemently swinging
and cutting his enemy to pieces, the blacksmith, growing slightly
impatient, had coughed a couple times to draw his attention to
parting with the coin.

Raffious had dispassionately turned around
low and, with a view to truly test its abilities, had given the
sword a vicious, horizontal swipe. In doing so, he had sliced off
the blacksmith’s legs just above the knees. After that, ignoring
the man’s screams, the arms had gone next. Then he had walked over
to the limbless, shivering body and, point-down, then skewered the
man straight through the back of the head.

-----------------------------

Hoidrious stopped outside their cell with his
jailer/executioner-looking goons. Turning to look inside, he
grinned openly, his expression looking as if he expected them to
leap up and greet him like long-lost friends.

Raffious closed his eyes, and Longinus didn’t
move.

Raffious, of course, was paralysed, so it
made sense that he didn’t jump at the chance to ingratiate himself
with the leader. However, Longinus had a plan, and it involved
antagonising Hoidrious just enough to make him snap. It seemed to
work, because he was able to telepathically message Hoidrious,
proving that messages worked at close range. It was obvious that
they couldn’t reach down or up from the cells though.

The message he sent was not a friendly
one.

Hoidrious was furious, from the apparent
boiled look on his face. Longinus apologised vociferously, saying
that the lack of blood had messed with his mind. With this lie,
Longinus knew that Hoidrious would still be brewing, looking for
the slightest reason to explode.

Longinus’ plan was forming; now he just
needed Raffious to engage it unknowingly.