The Dark Messenger (17 page)

‘You have a lot to learn, bitch. Fuck with me
and you won’t be living long, I promise,’ she said calmly into
Becky’s face. She then let her grip go and slipped her leading
elbow forwards into Becky’s face, smashing her head backwards into
the wall.

Becky was furious; the vampire anger was
enraged, and she spun round again, intending on replying to the
elbow.

But this time Kaine was on her. Furious, he
grabbed her throat in his extremely strong grip and began to
squeeze tighter and tighter until he could be certain that Becky
would behave. Only as his rage was taking over him did Regina
intervene.

‘Kaine, don’t hurt her!’ she cried.

Through the rage building inside he heard her
voice and instantly relaxed his grip, just enough to not kill
her.

‘Sorry, darling. She pissed me off in the
hospital too. She just doesn’t listen, the stupid bitch.’

Regina touched his face. ‘Remember, she is
new to our world. Her body is obviously having a bad reaction to
the turning process.’

She reached for one of the glasses on the
cabinet behind her. ‘Here let’s give her the blood.’

Kaine held Becky’s mouth open, her head
wedged backwards tightly against the wall, and Regina quickly
poured the blood into it. The sustenance had an instant effect;
Becky’s rage subsided and her fingers, clutching Kaine’s arm,
gradually lost all power. Her arms collapsed to the bed and her
eyelids suddenly shut tight as she passed out.

‘Finally,’ Kaine breathed in relief. He then
noticed his wife looking at his badly chewed-up arm.

‘I know, baby. That was Becky’s doing.’ He
shook his in disbelief at the memory. ‘She’s a feisty one. Had her
teeth locked in the whole journey home,’ he said.

Neither of them was worried; they knew that
by the following morning the lacerations would be completely gone,
leaving no scars. Vampire injuries were nearly always fully healed
within a day, or two at the most. Only the wounds infected from
werewolf claws seemed to take so much longer to heal, due to the
infectious slime that covered them.

‘I’m going upstairs to call Raffious then,’
Regina said as she trotted up the stairs with her drink in her
hand, to make the call.

Kaine picked Jenny up and carried her out of
the room, stopping for a second outside the door to lock it. When
he reached the lounge, he carefully laid her down on their big
brown suede sofa and then wrapped her in a soft warm blanket.

‘Did you get me a drink?’ he called out loud
to Regina.

‘Yes, baby. It’s on the chest of drawers in
Becky’s room,’ she messaged.

‘Damn,’ Kaine said to himself. He’d hoped
that she had brought his up with her, but then remembered she had
left the room first to call Raffious. He had stupidly walked right
past his and not even seen it.

‘Solomon. Bruce. Come and watch this woman,
will you please?’ he asked the dogs as he walked out of the lounge.
Both of them flew into the room and immediately sat by the sofa,
guarding her as instructed.

As he was walking back toward the lounge some
minutes later with his drink, he heard Jenny scream. Looking across
the room, he saw that she was sitting up on the sofa looking quite
disorientated, holding her neck in both hands. Regina heard the
scream too, and bolted past her husband, a bag of ice in her hand.
She had just taken it out of the freezer moments before to place on
Jenny’s neck whilst she slept.

‘My neck--it hurts so much,’ she said, the
intense pain keeping her unaware of the fact she was in a strange
place. Regina, smiling, showed her the ice and walked over to her
before placing it softly against her neck. Jenny gave her a
relieved look as the freezing cold ice made an instant improvement
on her terrible condition.

‘Where am I, and who are you?’ she muttered
in an extremely brittle voice. She could hardly speak through the
pain.

‘Shhh--don’t speak.’ Regina advised gently.
‘You are in our house. Please there’s no need to worry. My husband
saved you from those awful men in the hospital.’

‘Hospital, what hospit...?’

But then terror lit her eyes as she recalled
the day’s events, flooding into her mind like a
partially-remembered song, that was suddenly brought back in full.
She tensed up as she recognized Kaine, the mountain-sized –
creature – who was standing in the doorway watching her.

Regina could hear Jenny’s sharp intake of
breath, and knew she was gearing up to scream.

‘He’s a…a… Vamp’ she started to say, pointing
a shaking finger at him.

‘Yes, darling. Don’t speak, just listen and
calm down.’ Regina took Jenny’s hands and gazed gently into her
eyes. ‘We are both vampires, but we won’t hurt you. We are not like
the stories you have heard. Kaine saved your life. He is the
kindest vampire you will ever meet, I promise,’ she said, really
hoping as she finished her sentence that Jenny would not react
further and just accept it.

‘We won’t hurt you. We are your friends,’
Kaine said, crouching down so that he was not so huge in size as he
spoke to her.

‘Oh, and we have your friend Becky downstairs
too. She’s asleep in our spare bedroom. She’s okay; I think she
needs to sleep now, as we gave her some medicine. She will be fine
soon though, and then you can see her,’ he said, smiling at
her.

Jenny then remembered Kaine back in the
hospital and how he had been the one who had neutralized the
situation. He had stopped the horrible men who were trying to kill
her, and he had been extremely gentle with her before she had
passed out.

‘Sorry.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘I
just…haven’t met real vampires before.’

‘We aren’t like them, trust me.’ Regina
replied. ‘They kill humans and we don’t. We only drink deer’s
blood, which you have to agree is hardly anything different to
humans eating venison, is it?’ She hoped her explanation would put
Jenny’s mind at rest that she was truly safe there.

‘I love venison too,’ Jenny said in
agreement. She smiled a little, then winced at the extreme pain in
her neck that she received for doing so.

Kaine put a hand on Jenny’s shoulder and said
to her, ‘Jenny, I will make you a promise which I will keep. I will
protect you and never let any harm come to you. Okay?’

Regina smiled at her, hoping it was enough to
reassure her that he wasn’t lying either.

Then a tear began to roll down Jenny’s cheek,
and soon after more followed, opening the floodgates. She started
sobbing. Regina slid onto the edge of the sofa and put her arm
around her.

‘Go on, let it all out. You will feel so much
better afterwards. It always does for me,’ she said in a soft
caring voice.

Solomon and Bruce hadn’t moved an inch when
Jenny had woken up, but now both of them knew it was their moment.
Together they rushed over to the edge of the sofa and started
licking Jenny’s hand, which was just showing from underneath her
blanket. Solomon pushed his nose under the blanket and started
whining, as his tail thrashed around. Kaine was about to tell them
to lay down when he could see that Jenny had stopped crying because
of them, and was actually appreciating their affection.

Jenny slid her hand out from under the
blanket and started to stroke them both. Together they took turns
knowing she was ill by sliding their heads down underneath her hand
so that she could slide her fingers through their fur. As she did,
they made the strangest of sounds.

Regina smiled at her dogs. ‘Looks like they
like you a lot too. Don't you worry, Jenny. We will sort all this
mess out for you and your friend. You can both stay here with us
for as long as you want,’ she said, looking up at her husband and
hoping that he didn’t mind, realizing that she hadn’t actually
asked him first.

He didn’t mind
though.
Far from it, really
he thought as he nodded back to her. She was too
busy with the dogs to notice.

Regina then got up and left
the room for a second, and when she returned she had in her hands,
her
‘just in case’
box from upstairs.

‘Here. I hope it helps,’ she said, passing
Jenny some aspirin and a glass of water.

She’d found the box one day, and after
looking inside it, realized that she should keep it, ‘just in case’
she ever met another human who needed the medicine that was inside
it.

‘I hope they help. Pills weren't around when
I was a human,’ she said.

Jenny nodded, trying to understand this new
reality she had been brought into. She had so many questions…

‘We will leave you now so you can get some
sleep, okay?’ Regina touched Kaine’s arm and turned to go. At the
door she turned and said, ‘And, oh! We have asked a good friend to
come over. His name is Raffious, and he is a holy man. He was very
concerned about your neck when I called him earlier. He said that
he should be here soon to see you, if you don't mind.’ She smiled
reassuringly. ‘He's very nice, so there’s no need to be scared,
okay?’

Jenny nodded. Then she closed her eyes and
soon after, fell asleep.

One hundred of Rex’s Elite Warriors had been
given their orders to accompany ten infected humans up to Scotland
to attack Angus and his pathetic coven. His exact words had been,
‘Upon arrival, make those Scottish bastards pay for their crime of
killing humans in public. Then return with their priceless
artifacts after destroying everything else.’

The journey was going to be a long one. Soon
all of them, vampires and humans alike, were going to be crammed
together inside steel cargo containers before being loaded onto a
freight train early the next morning. They would be in the freezing
cold steel boxes for hours, heading for the highlands. Most of them
knew that there was a strong possibility they would die up there,
but death to these warriors would be the ultimate proof that they
would die for their coven, and none of them particularly feared it.
They actually welcomed a battle where their attackers might be
similarly matched or even more skilled. To date none of them had
ever met beings as evil as themselves.

After it was confirmed by their leaders that
they were going on this trip, they had been so happy, that the
noise they had made was unbelievable. They had grabbed each other
viciously by the shoulders and snarled in each other’s faces,
banging the walls and cheering. They loved battle and they loved
going into war against other covens, except the only downside was,
that some of them might never see their master again. They also
hoped that this time the war was just, and wasn’t so that Rex could
steal Angus’ riches, as many of them had been suspicious of before,
when they were at war with the Scots a thousand years
previously.

On the train, the infected humans were all
held inside the last cargo container where they were chained
together by their arms and legs. As an added precaution, they were
also laid down flat on the floor and covered in blankets to keep
them warm. Then a hardened steel net was laid over the top to
ensure that they stayed that way too. The vampires were pure evil
and would fight absolutely anything, but being inside cargo
containers cornered by werewolves was not a situation they cared to
face. If the train was delayed for some reason or another, they had
dangerous cargo on board; and if that happened, they had to make
sure their prisoners couldn’t escape, because that night it was
going be full moon. Aside from these humans, they took a further
ten uninfected female humans, both for their torturing
entertainment and to drink their blood once torturing got boring.
They had been careful to keep the infected only as males, to ensure
that there were no mistakes when they were up there.

Normally, if they were on a quest they would
have flown the journey, but as they were going into battle they
needed to be strong on arrival. Getting as much rest as possible
was imperative. It would have been nice, they thought, if they were
going for pleasure. They could have tasted different kinds of blood
up north on their way, stopping in villages here and there for the
night, but they needed to get there fast; with maximum energy, so
travelling by train was the perfect way to go.

The actual plan was that they were going as
guests. Before Rex had left for the reservoir, he had called the
Scottish leader, Angus, and told him that the covens down in the
south of England were planning revenge against them for the TV
broadcast, which Angus vehemently denied his covens’ involvement
with. It had been the main topic of a huge meeting that he had just
held, and he thought that he should inform Angus. He told him that
the thousand years or so that their two covens had been at peace
had been nice, and he thought it was pointless for them to break it
now over something so trivial.

Rex also said that if they were not
responsible for the heinous act, which he believed they were
innocent, then his warriors would find the true culprits and
together their covens could deal with them.

Angus had foolishly agreed, and together they
had then made the final arrangements for when they would meet up.
Rex had thanked Angus and said he might even come there
personally.