The Dark Messenger (47 page)

At this point Hoidrious expected the feeling
in the room to become quite palpable, and that Rex would be
suffering from paranoia. Rivers of it would undoubtedly be flowing
through his mind, accompanied by the vision of ships full of angry
coven members. He would be aware when they found out the news of
his error that it would be as if a thick impenetrable mist had been
lifted from their eyes. They would see clearly and realize that he
had ordered the attack not for retribution of the rule being
broken, but purely for the treasures that lay in Angus’ castle.

Then if Hoidrious’ presumptions were right,
Rex would be looking for a way out of this, which would mean the
messenger had to die. It would be clear to him that if the
messenger was not around to tell the story, then the threat to
topple him from power would be gone too.

Hoidrious’ own henchmen Loicheonk and Marchilla
would naturally be
ready for such action and thwart his attempts. As an added measure
they would snap his wrist for trying to both kill the innocent and
slime his way out of the mess he’d put himself in.
Rex would try to scream out for his guards, but
Hoidrious would have already made sure they were well out of
earshot.

Then with his wrist in
agony, Rex would demand that
Loicheonk and Marchilla let go of him immediately.
At that moment Hoidrious would announce that he was taking over as
leader. He would tell the tyrant that the coven from there on would
judge his crimes and pass sentence.

Hoidrious
had felt sure he could explain the whole thing and after the coven
members had heard from the messenger, he felt sure they would rule
Rex to be either incarcerated for eternity into their most heinous
stench-filled cells, or simply killed--brutally.

Of course none of it would work on these vicious vampires
without entangling it with
hell will come for you
s
throughout the story. Then telling them in
layman’s terms, he would deeply impress upon them that should the
tyrannical Rex still be in power when Satan rose up, their
punishment would undeniably be extinction.

He knew he
would have to explain how Rex tricked them when he had said Satan
would punish them for not attacking, and then let them know that
most, if not all of the shit that drizzled out of the old bastards
mouth had in fact been rubbish. Hoidrious expected he would have to
then impress upon them that Rex was seriously ill, with his fatal
disease being acute verbal diarrhea.

He expected
that the speech needed work but was sure they would fool for it,
and then Rex would finally be gone forever.

Only not before
the murderous old bastard had gotten his own vicious whipping
session.

Hoidrious
couldn’t stop fantasizing about holding the heavy leather whip,
flicking it out underarm to almost full length and then as if on a
trial run, simply recoiling it back in. He saw himself doing this a
couple of times to ease the arm muscles and get used to the smooth
action before fully committed to the cobra-like overarm strike.
Yanking back just as the heavy braided end viciously bore down upon
Rex’s back, and hearing that unmistakable sound. The sound of the
whip as it snatched deep trenches of flesh; ripping them away from
the evil fucker’s back and leaving him screaming in agony.

Hoidrious felt
sure that he would also be experiencing red mist coming down before
his own eyes. His rage would flourish and his anger would be in its
prime.

‘Stop!’ Rex
would probably shout after the first hundred, but Hoidrious would
be conveniently deaf at that point.

Just as Rex’s
stifled cries would be fading into low guttural groans, Hoidrious
would whisper into the tyrant’s ear, ‘Can’t do that. Just getting
started.’

Regarding the
exact quantity of lashes Hoidrious knew he couldn’t be sure, but he
envisaged it would be a tidy number. Smiling to himself, he
considered that maybe he would offer Rex some kind of deal.
Something like, ‘get one lash as part of the revenge, and get the
second lash for free’.

----------

However there was a major flaw neither he nor
Angus had seen, something that affected his plans in a massive
way.

Hoidrious had taken a long time to devise
this plan of his. He had plenty of it whilst he was lying in the
stinking cells after Rex had whipped him. Being cautious and
attentive, he had meticulously gone over and over his scheme,
making sure that he hadn’t left anything out.

Only he had missed something and it had
turned out to be extremely important too.

On the day when he had been released from the
cells, Rex had ordered he resume his duties as number two in
command. This seemed strange and Hoidrious suspected that Rex had
only really done so merely to confuse his mind. However seizing the
opportunity and the freedom, he had immediately told his goons to
contact Angus. In the conversation with the Scot, he had told him
briefly about the week’s holiday screaming in agony from being
whipped whilst locked in the cells. He had then told him about the
plan he had devised, and together both of them had deliberated over
it.

The conclusion had been a green light for go.
Angus had loved it and had said in his deep Scottish accent,
’Regardless that the Elite warriors are coming up to kill us, I
truly think this plan has worth.’

Hoidrious also said that as soon as his fake
messenger had been to visit, he would have Rex removed from power
and the war between them would be over.

The Scot had said he also welcomed the idea
that the Elite warriors were coming up to try to kill him, because
he had a room waiting for their arrival—one they called the ‘Ambush
Room’.

Then as things happened over the next
fortnight or so, Rex had contacted Angus and lied, saying that he
was only sending his warriors up there to hunt out the true
perpetrators of the crime. He had said on the phone that he would
send fresh humans with them as a gift for the Scots. Together his
and Angus’ warriors could party for five hours until they would
have to leave.

Hoidrious had told Angus the truth about it
though. He had phoned him afterwards and told him that the
prisoners they were bringing with them were infected with the
lycan/werewolf curse. Angus had laughed, and then had commented on
Rex’s deeply perturbed and sadly twisted mind.

---------

With the plan underway and after Angus had
sent vampires dressed in kilts to Edinburgh, Rex had fallen for it
hook line and sinker. Everything had seemed to be going well, and
Hoidrious had been getting deeply excited at the thought of finally
ruling the coven as their number one.

Then suddenly Rex was summoned off on some
wild meeting. He had gone to visit a priest out in a reservoir in
Kent, and even though he had taken an army of warriors with him,
the report had come back that he had foolishly stepped out onto a
raft alone. Hoidrious was told that the raft had seemed to be under
some sort of spell, and that it had sailed out into the center of
the reservoir where Rex had been alone and mumbling to himself.
Then he had a fit of some kind before he fell into the waters and
was never seen again.

That day passed and then when his warriors
had returned, all hell had broken loose in the coven with the news
of his disappearance. Other covens, allies to the White Coven, had
joined in a massive search, and although the banks of the reservoir
had been meticulously searched, no one had found any signs of the
tyrant.

Then when the warriors had returned, Mietioc
had immediately prepared himself for the Scotland mission. The
following day they had taken a train for the Highlands.

At that moment the flaw to Hoidrious’ plan
had suddenly become apparent. If Rex was not going to be around on
the eve of the attack in Scotland, then there would be no point in
having the fake messenger arrive with the news that Angus wasn’t
guilty of breaking the age-old rule. Then in turn later he also
wouldn’t be able to have Rex laying there, bound, gagged and
screaming before the whole coven.

Hoidrious being deeply nervous that the plan
might be failing, and to save himself from being embarrassed by
telling Angus about Rex’s untimely disappearance, had decided to
wait before contacting the Scot. He reasoned with himself that Rex
must be doing something secretive and hadn’t really vanished. He
also told himself that at any moment in his usual repulsive way,
the old fucker would come walking back into the coven grinning.

That reasoning was Hoidrious’ big mistake and
it blew any chance of stopping the war.

As number two in command he should have sent
urgent word to Mietioc via the fastest-flying vampire they had. He
should have sent him up to Scotland at full speed with a message to
hold off on the attack. The problem he feared was that if he did do
that, and then Rex had turned up grinning, he himself would be in
deep shit with him for doing so.

Then as it does, the time had ticked past and
still quite undecided in his mind, suddenly it had dawned on him
that it was too late to stop the attack anyway, by then Mietioc’s
train would have already arrived in Scotland.

Then later that day Angus had phoned and told
him that the Elite warriors had been successfully eradicated off
the face of the Earth by heavy machine-gun fire.

Angus had said that he had been surprised
because ten of Mietioc’s warriors had secretly remained hiding in
the tunnels, and then when his vampires had leapt down to gloat
over the dead, the screaming female gifts of blood had lured many
of them in to be killed. Then as they had run out of bullets,
finally his coven had managed to kill the last of the ten
warriors.

Angus had told Hoidrious considering he had
told his coven he expected none of his warriors to die that day, he
had been seriously pissed off when so many of them had met a brutal
end. He then said that the whole thing had been a seriously
embarrassing affair.

He also added that the sentry who had met
Mietioc’s men outside in Holyrood Park had confirmed seeing the
male infected prisoners when Mietioc had first arrived. Angus had
noted from his high up position that he had only ever seen female
prisoners, the ones whom his own vampires had torn apart.

He said he had been deeply concerned as to
the whereabouts of the infected prisoners, and gave immediate
instructions to search the tunnel thoroughly, and also the park
outside. At that point in the night when Hoidrious was still
speaking to the Scot, and still with a few hours before the full
moon appeared, they had yet to be found.

Angus said he wasn’t concerned because he was
going to leave his nastiest warriors armed with machine guns at the
top of the ambush room for them, just incase they weren’t found in
time.

Also because Hoidrious
never told Angus about Rex disappearing on the day of the attack,
he had the problem of dealing with the messenger from the
fictitious Irish
Cluckunic coven.

So that night
Hoidrious gave
orders to
Loicheonk and Marchilla to cancel him, but in a permanent
way so he wouldn’t tell Angus either. He was killed.

The reason he had to cancel the plan was he doubted the
coven would be receptive of negative news aimed against their
leader,
with
Rex was unable to defend himself due to his absence.

That
night had proven it because the whole coven was sent into some
desperately macabre and twisted paranormal shock, as the mental
pain of it all had begun to register in their minds. Hoidrious had
felt strange himself as he saw them wandering the corridors
listlessly. None of them spoke to one another either; the whole
place seemed like a cloister for un-dead religions. It was clear to
look at their faces, that they were all mourning their fallen
leader.

Hoidrious
also felt strongly that had he called them all to a meeting and
then spoken badly about Rex, they would have reacted
accordingly.

Since his public whipping, their level of respect towards
him as their number two had fallen considerably, and for this to be
restored he knew he needed time.
He felt if he had mentioned anything bad
about Rex in the negative, they would probably have become violent
with him, and maybe even to the point of torture too.

Over the
next few days even though Hoidrious had managed to delay any
further attacks against Angus, who by then had sadly been told of
the plan’s cancellation, and Rex’s disappearance, they still
demanded in his absence the war with Angus continue. They demanded
retribution for the age-old rule being broken.

Lack of news about Mietioc’s success coupled with Rex’s
disappearance, had caused disturbed, false, and almost demonic
rumors of Angus’ involvement. And they were spreading
exponentially. Wit
h their urgent need for revenge, they even told other
covens without Hoidrious’ permission, and phone calls from their
leaders were flooding in offering their battle services too. It was
strange because they never once blamed the church even though they
knew Rex went to see a priest and not Angus when he
disappeared.