The Dark Messenger (13 page)

Back in the hospital ward, Jenny was
struggling to breath whilst Becky who had just winded one of the
skinheads with a vicious kick to the gut, was about to be shot by
his mate.

Then suddenly Jenny caught a glimpse of
something fast approaching them through the gap in the wards doors.
It was something massive, and moving with extreme speed.

BOOM!

Suddenly the double doors exploded inwards
with such force, they ripped themselves off their hinges and then
crashed to the floor.

Standing there in the doorway was Kaine.

One of the remaining attackers swung his gun
so that it was pointing directly at him. ‘Freeze!’ he shouted.

Kaine stood there grinning back at him.

‘They are silver bullets, and you’re dead!’
the skinhead yelled. He pulled the trigger in rapid succession.

Nine bullets flew directly through the air at
Kaine. Knowing what was coming, he blocked his face with his arm
and held it there until the gun was empty.

‘You fools!’ he shouted, lowering his arm
again. ‘Don’t you know anything? If you think silver bullets kill
all vampires, you’re very much mistaken,’ he snarled. He then
arched his head backwards to reveal his fangs and roared. Becky’s
roar had been frightening enough earlier, but his was deafening,
spine-chilling—one that gave no doubt that someone was going to be
in deep trouble.

Kaine’s hearing suddenly picked up a noise,
which sounded like someone was moving about on the roof. He gave no
indication that he had been distracted though, and glared at his
quarry.

The three men froze, then the one who had
fired at him suddenly looked down and saw that he had wet himself.
Kaine started laughing.

Embarrassed, the shooter then turned and ran
towards the fire door. He landed a massive boot on it and the door
burst open. He was halfway inside the stairwell when Becky knocked
him out by slamming him into the opposite wall. Now standing over
him she could see his jugular vein pulsing in his neck beneath her;
she wanted her first feed and it was calling to her.

‘Leave him!’ Kaine screamed, but she ignored
him and went in for the kill.

Kaine knew he couldn’t allow it. He also knew
that it was unlikely that she had ever fed on human blood before,
and he wasn’t about to let her start now. With lightning speed, he
flung his Ghurka knife right at the man, hitting him in the back of
the head. It buried itself in so deep that the blade came out the
other side.

Becky was furious. She had desperately wanted
to kill him by draining his blood, and now he was useless to her as
a corpse. Even as newly-turned as she was, she knew that she needed
to drain the blood and have her victim die from her bite, not drink
the blood from a dead man.

Turning around, she snarled back at him.

‘STOP!’ he shouted at her, but she didn’t
listen. Instead, she decided that he would pay for depriving her of
the first kill with his own blood instead.

Screaming, she flew out of the doorway at him
and then leapt high in the air with her razor sharp finger nails
ready for the kill.

Kaine stepped forwards,
reining in his power so as to keep from hurting her too severely.
As she fell on him, he threw a fist at her face.
Was it too much though, or maybe too
little?
he wondered, as his fist connected
with her forehead.

As the punch landed though, her body still
came forwards underneath her, causing her head to be thrust
backwards. She crashed down onto her back beneath him.

The two men left standing in the room were
speechless, unable to move in their terror.

Kaine looked down at Becky, fervently hoping
that she was out cold. Unfortunately, she wasn’t--she launched back
up, hissing at him. Kaine didn’t wait a second though. With the
back of his hand he slapped her hard across her face. As it
connected, her face distorted, her neck went back and to the side,
and her body followed suit. She twisted violently and crashed hard
onto her side.

‘BEHAVE!’ he shouted at her. He reached over
and grabbed her wrist, sliding her across to his side, where she
lay motionless but still breathing.

Turning back to the men he said to them, ‘You
disgust me. You are here working for a sick government department,
trying to catch a vampire for experimentation, and you would
happily kill this human woman too. I am a vampire, but I would
never hurt a human unless I had to, and most certainly would never
hurt a lady. Don’t you fools have any morals?’

‘Sorry, man,’ one of them said as he began to
shake. His mate also apologized.

Kaine shook his head in disbelief, and then
turned to address Jenny who was laying on the floor still
struggling to breathe.

‘Are you Jenny, my darling?’ he asked,
gentling his facial expression and his voice so as to keep from
scaring her further.

Jenny was petrified, and simply nodded.

Kaine looked down at her throat and could see
the blood in her veins was pulsing abnormally.

Keeping a tight hold on Becky, Kaine put out
his other hand to her. Jenny tried to crawl away from him.

‘I won’t hurt you, I promise,’ he said to
her. She looked up haltingly, and then her eyes connected with his.
As they did, something inside of her truly believed him.

Forcing his knee down on Becky to hold her
there, he reached forward with both hands and gently placed them on
either side of Jenny’s neck. She didn’t resist this time, and as
they touched her skin the effect was instant. His hands were
freezing cold and the pain began to calm a little, but the effect
on her brain was completely different. As the pain subsided, she
grew dizzy. Then she suddenly passed out.

Becky’s eyes suddenly snapped open, and she
squirmed under Kaine’s knee hold. ‘Fucker, I’m gonna KILL YOU!’ she
screamed.

Kaine turned around and
then brought his forehead down exceptionally hard into her face. It
was a perfect hit and she bounced off the floor once, and then
stopped moving.
Nice hit,
he thought.

Suddenly, he could hear the sound of huge
helicopter rotor blades overhead. As it began to hover, he thought
he could make out the sound of maybe two helicopters. Yes, behind
the huge vibration coming from the first, he could hear a second
one too. Then as the sound grew louder, the wires in the ceiling
began to shake and dust fell down from everywhere.

‘Darling, hurry up!’ Regina messaged from her
hiding place out in the cemetery. There are two helicopters above
you, and from one of them there are men with machine guns sliding
down ropes.’

‘
Shoot those damn things,
would you?’ he replied.

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

Using the ‘CheyTac’ sniper rifle armed with
.50 caliber bullets, Regina tried to hit one of the two helicopters
from her hiding place between the gravestones in Brighton’s main
cemetery. She fired four rounds that completely missed. Looking up
and away from the gun’s night vision sight, she cursed at
herself.

‘Damn! Concentrate, will you woman?’ she
chided herself. Her heart was pounding violently, and she knew that
she was too nervous and needed to calm herself down. If she didn’t,
she wouldn’t hit anything. Her husband’s life deeply depended on
her accuracy.

Kaine had taught her well though. He had put
her in situations where she had missed shot after shot, and then
had gotten her extremely angry with herself by laughing and saying
that she couldn’t do it. Just as she had been about to snap, he’d
smile at her and say, ‘Right now you are pissed. Relax, breath,
slow down, and see your shot.’ When she had, surprisingly on the
out breath when she fired, she had hit every target perfectly.

Knowing that time was of the essence, she
took in another deep breath and then leant forward, remembering
what she had done before. She positioned herself in front of the
gun’s sights again. This time she breathed, then she allowed for
the moving target, calculated the distance, considered the wind,
and on the out breath, she fired.

The rifle kicked back into her shoulder as
the .50 caliber bullet instantly covered the thousand yards between
herself and the hospital. It was a perfect hit too; there was a
massive clanging noise and the tail rotor flew off. The helicopter
completely out of control, then spun round and round, before it
nose-dived and crashed hard into rooftop. As it hit, suddenly it
burst into flames and then flipped on its side. Some of the men in
the back were screaming as they leapt out of the wreckage covered
in flames. They made about 5 paces before they fell over as the
intense heat engulfed them.

Then she slid out the gun’s empty magazine
from underneath the rifle and jammed in a new one, a full magazine
with five shots. She was happy with herself and knew her husband
would be proud of her as well. Leaning back down again, she started
sighting in the second helicopter, which was facing her. She froze
though for a second, as she was sure she could see the pilot
looking directly at her. She swore she could see his face, but she
pulled the trigger anyway.

She put all five shots straight into the
helicopter’s main screen, two to the left side and three to the
right. Dropping to the ground behind the wall, she pulled the rifle
down with her, just in case she had missed and they started looking
for where the shooter was.

The pilot had been hit directly in the face
with the .50 caliber bullet. His head exploded as the bullet then
passed through the seat behind him, smashing into and killing
another person in the back. The co-pilot didn’t have time to react
before he too was hit, as another bullet then smashed through his
part of the screen and tore him in half. The helicopter spun round
and round several times like the last one. It tipped forwards, then
raced downwards, narrowly missing the roof top, and exploded in the
car park below, right where her husband’s motorbike had been. She
didn’t see it get hit exactly, but knew from the size of the
explosion that she had some serious apologizing to do when she got
home. Looking back one more time, she hoped that no one innocent
had gotten hurt when the chopper crashed. The flames were growing
in size, and hugged the contours of the hospital building. They
spread seemingly everywhere at once, raging up into a massive
inferno.

Back inside the hospital ward, Kaine had told
the two men that if he ever saw them chasing his kind again, he
would make their deaths as slow and as painful as he could imagine.
Then, with Becky now sadly awake again and firmly gripped in his
left hand and the limp Jenny now in his right, he launched himself
out of the main ward window, beating his wings up into the night
sky as he headed for home.

Longinus had been watching from the rooftop
and had seen the whole thing, but due to Kaine’s size, he had
preferred not to challenge him. Instead, he chose to watch the
drama unfold through the clear pane in the window behind Becky’s
bed. After the two helicopters had crashed, he then followed Kaine,
making sure to keep well back in case he turned around to check
behind him.

As he flew, though, Longinus started to think
about who he knew in his coven who might be strong enough to fight
this beast of a vampire in front of him. Suddenly he thought of
their leader, Vius.

Now that would be a good
matchup,
he thought. Then, considering
what he had just seen Kaine do in the hospital, he wondered if Vius
would even be able to beat him. The doors of the ward exploding
like they had, the accuracy of his knife throwing, the fact that
bullets couldn’t hurt him…
No,
he thought,
maybe even
Vius would lose against him.

At 6ft 6, Vius was the equal of Kaine in
size, and was a skilled swordsman. His only weakness was the lack
of one eye, carved from his face with a dagger by Rex as a reward
for saving his life.

Vius may or may not be a
possibility,
he thought with a
smile.
Still, if the battle ever happens
between them, I hope I get to watch.

Rex looked out upon his
subjects as they milled about him. The meeting was about to come to
conclusion for the night. All in all, he’d been pleased with the
results. He saw the way they had all looked at him, and he was sure
that they were all envious
.

I certainly cut an
impressive figure, if I must say myself
,
he thought as he stroked the soft surface of his robe.

Rex wore his normal costume tonight, which
was made of purple velvet. It was similar to a monk’s outfit, with
a hood that came down past his face. The robe was full-length,
ending so that it covered his feet. He had a thick red rope
fastened around his waist, which had tassels on either end. The
long sleeves covered his hands, but did nothing to hide the
horrible four-inch long dark purple nails that grew from his
fingertips.

Just as the coven was ready to leave the
Tower of London, and the main doors on the other side of the river
were about to be opened, a messenger came flying down through the
tunnels, beating his wings to pieces against the hard rock walls.
The message he had was urgent, and he thought that it would please
his master if he delivered it immediately.