The Dark Messenger (44 page)

Apart from protecting Hoidrious, the goons Loicheonk and
Marchilla’s duties, involved their tasting his food to reduce the
chance of poisoning; and, like bodyguards for the president, if
ever an assassination attempt was made, they had to be willing to
take a hit for him. So far they had never, in well over fifteen
hundred years, witnessed any kind of attack. They hoped they would
one day, because they felt confident in their beliefs that they
were the strongest and most formidable warriors to exist. They
believed no one could harm them. They even thought the elite
warriors with their,
We bang our chests together, and sharpen our
swords daily
attitudes,
were pathetic in comparison.

Throughout the war, which Hoidrious as Rex’s lap dog was
never allowed to question, he still chatted with Angus on a regular
basis. On the face of it, this would seem bizarre, considering the
fact that it was his coven that had been fighting the
Scots.

Rex
on the back of a lie, had orchestrated the whole thing, and
had never admitted that his true intention for being there was
simple; that he wanted their riches for himself. It didn’t pan out
for him though, because after so much time devoted to the war, he
was forced to give in. The passageways beneath Angus’ castle were
too claustrophobic for battle purposes, and the numbers of his dead
warriors kept rising.

Rex
wouldn’t have cared, but grave reports were coming back in from the
battlefield, suggesting his warriors were growing suspicious of his
intentions. It was being spread around, that their battles and
deaths, were only so that Rex could feather his own
nest.

Then,
with Captain Ognian and a few others, reporting that a revolution
seemed imminent and, in their view was almost unavoidable, Rex had
grudgingly commanded that they all stand down and return home. He
spent the next decade with his tail between his legs, suffering
from deep shame.

Now a
thousand years had passed since his embarrassing defeat, and even
after all this time, both of the covens, still harboured
unfathomable levels of bitter hatred towards one
another.

It was
for this reason that Hoidrious chose to keep hush hush about his
business relationship with the Scot leader. He feared that his own
coven members and Rex wouldn’t understand that it was for their own
benefit he kept a channel open with the enemy. He knew they would
neither accept it, nor deliberate before finding him guilty of
treason if they ever heard. Then, as mayhem kicked off in the
coven, Rex would be forced to deal an ignominious torture upon him.
Afterwards, if he could still breathe, and his limbs were intact
and bending in the right directions, he knew that they would all
demand that he be expelled from their walls, leaving him alone in
the big world with no one to care for him.

Personality-wise, Hoidrious knew he was a deeply coven
kinda guy, and the thought of him being stuck in solitude for an
eternity without company, made him shudder. He believed that, apart
from sending him over the edge, this abandonment would lead to his
own deeply tragic and piteous demise. He also thought if he was
ever thrown out, there would be no chance that a vampire of his
age, with such a deep black stain on his CV, could ever find
another coven that would be willing to accept him. His name would
be laughed at or, worse, spat upon, and he would be considered to
be thereafter like a vile stench, a cretinous being, and the worst
to ever have existed within their covens community.

The whole
thing would be such a desperately sad moment in his existence, that
he could see it leading onwards to a deep level of anxiety and
depression. Then, with an abundance of anti-depressants being taken
to calm the pain, and gallons of gasoline consumed afterwards, to
wash them down with, he believed that insanity would demand he
concluded the deal by swallowing a match.

Regardless of
the possible punishments though, he still refused to cut his ties
with Angus, because he believed the benefits outweighed the risks.
The Scot had a plethora of business contacts in the north, and
those were important connections for Hoidrious to keep hold of.
Plus, up in that castle of his by Holyrood Park, the Scot had books
with so much evil in them that even Satan could learn a thing or
two—if he ever cared to stop by for a coffee and a browse, that
is.

Angus
hated Rex, and with Hoidrious, together, they had tried to have him
assassinated at different times in history. Angus kept Hoidrious’
name out of it for obvious reasons.

Then
using a messenger for deniability purposes, one time, he had even
approached a friend of Rex’s, a vampire named Brius, to see if he
might be interested in slicing the fucker’s head off.

Brius’
reputation for being a true friend was often thwarted by the
stories of him killing his own parents for some extra coin. So when
he was approached in the dark cobbled streets of Edinburgh, with
just one Victorian street lamp shining gloomily, he proved his true
colours. The Irish vampire was offered a mountain of shiny gold
pieces, which he pounced on immediately. His reply and acceptance
of the executioner role, with half the gold being paid up front,
had proved that Angus’ presumptions, being that he would turn on
his friend, hadn’t been wrong.

Brius had the nickname from then on
, as ‘the slithery little
toad’.

Unfortunately, the moniker didn’t last long though; sadly,
his valiant efforts failed him abysmally, and with them his dreams
for an eternal life too.

Rex, the
cunning little ass-wipe, who must be seemingly protected by a
guardian angel or something, for by the skin of his teeth, again he
managed to evade the death sentence that had been hanging around
his cretinous neck for years. Brius, however, who was always
quoting ‘It’s the luck of the Irish’ every time some good fortune
had landed his way, found this time that his good luck charm didn’t
come to his rescue, but instead, it ran the other way. The last of
a long line of Cluckunic clan from Ireland came to a swift and
brutal end as Rex beheaded him.

Then,
with fury rushing through his veins, Rex took to eradicating all
known landmarks of Brius’ family. The palace and all its history;
one of the oldest in the region was tragically burnt to the ground.
Its ancient ivy-covered walls, beautifully adorned with the most
divine masonic sculptures, fell to the flame, eradicating a
landmark that had dated back to well before the sun god, King Louis
XIV’s reign over France.

This
action, was Rex’s furious, and half-drunk, wine-soaked reply to
anyone else who might be watching, that he had again, slithered his
way out of being killed. He hoped that they were utterly horrified
by it and had learned a lesson. If that didn’t convince them
though, then his cutting out of Vius’ eye, he was sure to have
horrified them all to the point, where they would be puking all
over themselves, wherever the cowardly worms were
hiding.

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

For all
his existence to date, Hoidrious had strong beliefs that vampires
shouldn’t be the ones to hide in the shadows, and that his species
was above humans in every way. For two thousand years or more, all
he had ever wanted, was to see his kind coming out from the
shadows, and then to rage a vicious war against humanity. The
result obviously being that they would become triumphant over the
weaker humans, and then rule the planet from there on, instead of
being like caged dogs living deep underground. He strongly believed
that the humans should be doing what he thought they were designed
to do: feeding the master race with blood.

Throughout his time as number two in the coven, a role that
he had assumed from the time they had done Christ in with the
spear, things for him had been okay, but far from perfect. Rex had
been his boss when they were Romans, and then he had continued in
that position for 2000 years or more. Frankly, Hoidrious was
getting tired of not having full command. To be number two for him,
was like missing out on the The President of America job, and
simply landing the Vice President’s role. It had utterly pained
him.

But after all
of the sporadic assassination attempts, and Rex’s reaction to the
last one, there had been a period of a hundred years or so where
his growing need to become number one in the coven had fallen
dormant, like a terrorist sleeper cell.

Then one
day, as he was provoked by Rex’s actions, he snapped. His fury and
unreasonableness were quite like a terrorist sleeper cells, having
just awoken from a deep sleep. Now the urgency and passion for
having the number one position was freshly kickstarted in his mind,
and killing Rex was all he could think of. Only this time it was no
joke how he felt, and he was adamant that he was going to achieve
it. He even came up with a perfect way to cause a revolution in
their coven and with it, predicted that Rex would be ousted from
power, and soon afterwards would receive ignominious tortures of a
deeply beheading kind.

Then, if
when a vote was held, the beheading was not granted by popular
opinion, he would insist on being the one with the damn whip, and
it would be a hundred lashes for Rex, and not a mere sixty, as he’d
received.

What had
exactly brought Hoidrious out of his dormant state, was this:

There had
been a meeting called in the coven, and the huge room was filled to
capacity. Everything had been going great, and there had been many
executions, which was always good entertainment. There had been so
many in fact, that blood was in abundance everywhere. It had been
dripping down off the walls, and the guards were covered in it.
Brutally amputated limbs had found themselves centre stage in tug
of war competitions. It had been great, and a really joyous
occasion for all.

Then Rex
had mentioned the horrible weather outside, whilst they were
standing on their ledges, and he had slipped a comment about, not
to worry because he had the undeniable cure. Some silver sword, and
an idea that he had wanted to keep hush-hush for a while, something
about releasing werewolves across the planet to save the Earth from
destruction.

At that
moment Hoidrious had realised that he was thinking about taking
over the world, but not with vampires as he would have liked, but
with the howling beasts that they had all very nearly succumbed to
themselves in the great war.

Hoidrious
had quickly dived in and interrupted Rex, saying he had thought it
would be better to forget the fluffy beasts, and much better to
order a worldwide vampire attack on humanity.

Rex went
mad.

He had been
grinning down at a human who had just had his throat slit wide
open, and as Hoidrious’ words ricochet’d around in the old fuckers
brain, their meaning caused the most disastrous of effects.

Rex had spun
around in front of a packed house, and then leapt across to the
same ledge that Hoidrious was on, before hurling foul abuse at
him.

‘Are you stupid
or something?’ Rex had bellowed. ‘Don’t you realise that the
equilibrium balance would be shattered by doing that? Do you
actually want our species to succumb to a quick and lethal
end?’

Hoidrious
had absolutely no idea what the guy was on about. Equilibrium
balance? His immediate reaction being, that he had only been able
to stare, thinking that Rex had finally lost it in a big way. It
had been hard to hold in and suppress his desperate need to laugh.
Struggling deeply to resist. Somehow he managed to though, and just
stood glum-faced, and listening.

The
tension between them at that moment had been tangible to say the
least. All of the two hundred vampires in the room had dropped
their savagely torn limbs, and pints of blood to stare at them.
Hoidrious had felt like he was suddenly on the spot, and was
seriously embarrassed. This had been very uncomfortable, and hardly
a way for him to feel around his subordinates, especially
considering he was their second in command.

Rex had
had rivers of spittle coming out of his mouth and his eyes had
glazed over for a time, but after realising he had caused a scene,
he allowed himself to relax. Then he had apologised profusely to
the room at large for his outburst, before proceeding to explain
himself in greater detail.

After
bringing the crowd up to speed on the reasons for his sudden rant,
but keeping his own plans about the silver sword and werewolves
hush-hush for now, Rex then went on to explain why the age-old rule
of never being seen when attacking a human, was so
important.

Whilst he
spoke, two human males in their mid-twenties, who were lying sliced
and diced, and deeply terror-stricken on the ground, looked up at
him agog. For all intents and purposes, they had really needed to
be torn apart so they could die more quickly. However, whilst Rex
had spoke, no one dared to continue with the festivities, and by
the time he had finished, the lucky fuckers had escaped anymore
pain, by dying of shock.