The Dark Messenger (23 page)

Only the thought that maybe he wasn’t lying
about Rex, kept him from swinging for him.

Another warrior then stepped forwards and
said, ‘Sir I believe you should ask Vius first, sir.’

Voitek’s built up rage suddenly blew its top.
He swung around and brought his sword up under the vampire’s neck.
The blade sliced upwards slightly and missed cutting his ears on
both sides as it flew through his neck. The head somersaulted
forwards and bounced of the muddy ground. The body now headless
sank to its knees and then fell forwards to lay beside the
head.

Looking down at the victim with spittle
coming out of his mouth, he screamed above the rapidly increasing
wind, ‘How dare you ignore me? Didn’t I just say don't question
me?’

Turning to glare back at the other warriors,
he said, ‘Anyone else want to question my judgement? I am your
Captain, and I have decided that if Longinus can bring us back our
master, then it’s worth giving him the chance to prove himself. Rex
would forgive him and the coven would be saved.’

None of them dared to disagree. No one wanted
to donate their body to making it two dead warriors on that
hillside, so they said nothing.

Longinus then noticed that, down to the left
of the door, Vius was looking up at them.

‘Damn!’ Longinus uttered.

If he came over, Longinus
knew that he wouldn’t agree that there was a way to bring Rex back,
and he definitely would be punished for having suggested it.
Probably the same way as had just been suggested too--his legs
being amputated on this hillside. He felt very nervous now, and
prepared himself for fleeing if Vius made one move towards them. If
Vius messaged Voitek, he wouldn’t wait a second longer. He would
leap into the air and try to out-fly these fools. He started to
concentrate on his legs being strong, preparing for what seemed
inevitable now. They would have to give him a powerful thrust, so
powerful that he flew up fast like a missile into the sky--so fast
in fact that he would have to clear their sword swipes from beneath
too.
Would it be fast enough to clear
their bullets though,
he wondered. He knew
he would catch them off guard by fleeing. Maybe, just maybe
he...

Suddenly his thoughts were cut short as he
heard Vius screaming for a new fresh wave of vampires to get
involved with smashing the door in.

‘Be quick! How can you bring Rex back?’
Voitek shouted at him.

Longinus
like a fool
had
forgotten what he had just said about knowing how to bring Rex
back, and just for a millisecond then with a blank expression
across his face, wondered what the fuck Voitek was talking about.
Then it came back to him and he remembered.

‘Oh yes, Sorry, I will be quick-- Right, er,
I know a chant to summon a time-shifter.’ Longinus said choosing
his words carefully.

‘Can you summon him here now or not?’ Voitek
demanded. ‘Because if you can’t, that changes things, and not in a
good way for you too.’

‘Yes! Wait! Let me call him.’ Longinus closed
his eyes and started to chant some demonic ritual that the
time-shifter had taught him:

‘Gliades immordalis confoundatis gladioris
sietioras vioertis immordalis’

As his words aired into the night sky, the
wind all around them seemed to pick up again since its blast when
Voitek had just decapitated his own warrior. Then the sky began to
darken quite significantly too. Longinus repeated the words and as
he was finishing for the second time, suddenly standing there was
the old bastard himself, Raffious. He had food around his mouth
too.

‘Longinus, my friend, how are you? Are these
your vampires, now that I finally killed that stupid fool Rex?’
were his immediate words as he appeared in front of them.

Longinus almost swallowed his own tongue--he
couldn’t believe what he had just heard Raffious say, and grabbed
for his sword to defend himself.

‘Your old master Rex was a fool and all of
you are weak,’ Raffious sneered.

Voitek lunged hard at Raffious with his sword
in a forwards stabbing motion, using both his hands to increase its
power. Raffious immediately shape-shifted into the form of their
master Rex and, using his black magic, allowed the sword to look
like it was a killing blow. It penetrated deep into his chest.
Dropping to his knees, and appearing as Rex, he reached out towards
Voitek.

‘You killed me!’ he said in Rex’s old crony
voice.

Voitek couldn’t believe what he had done,
forgetting completely that moments before this guy had been an old
man with a white beard in white robes. He looked in horror at
Rex.

Completely stunned, he let go and stepped
backwards in shock and horror. ‘My master!’ he cried, bowing down
his head.

Then suddenly from behind he felt a cold
steel blade forcing its way up through the center of his back,
ripping through his veins and arteries before it slid out of his
throat. He fell forwards, sliding off the sword, and lay face-down
on the ground, dead.

And there behind him stood Vius.

Raffious then changed back into his “old man”
look, with his long white beard and priestly robes. He stood
laughing at Vius, whose hands were still firmly grasping the handle
of the bloodied sword. Vius suddenly realized he had been
tricked.

Raffious then burst out laughing as he
grabbed Longinus by the shoulder and they both vanished. Only his
laugh stayed a few seconds longer though, as if it were playing
mysteriously with the wind.

Lost for words and looking down at his
captain who was laying dead before him, he crouched by the body and
said, ‘I’m truly sorry, my friend.’

Chapter 18 - A new Recruit

Longinus had met Raffious in 2099 when he was
a member of the Scottish coven. Raffious was up there trying to
trade a story with the leader Angus, that concerned the church and
a priest having a baby with a nun. He wanted in return, their
broken piece of the magical Trucale vase, which he knew they
had.

The Scots didn’t care much
for their piece of the vase though, because they knew it did
nothing and was useless by itself. The highland vampires had
searched for the other half of the vase for many years, but still
to that date they had never found it.
They had their own suspicions though
of who did have it: the White Coven under Rex in the
south.

Now though, with the promise of trading it
for a story involving the church Angus, who hated Christianity, was
seriously contemplating doing the deal.

The vase itself dated back to the time of
Christ when he had blessed it, just before his crucifixion.

----------

Christ had met a poor invalid man who had
travelled for days in the blistering heat from his village to visit
him. He had recognized his suffering and after healing him, he also
took the man’s drinking vase and blessed it. The vase was forever
after known as the Trucale Vase. Its divine powers meant that it
would always stay full of the most purest water ever known to
mankind with magical healing powers. The man promised Christ that
he would travel the earth with it curing the terminally sick and
injured as he went. After Christ was crucified, Heaven ordered the
vase to be destroyed. Only because of a war raging between good and
evil, there wasn’t much time. The angels did visit the man who was
entrusted with the task of destroying the vase for them. Using a
hammer and an axe, he split the vase into two identical pieces in
front of them and then said that he would bury them in the
furthest, most opposite parts of the world.

Jonivac though, who was soon to be a fallen
angel watched over the man and saw exactly where he had buried the
two pieces. Hundreds of years later when he was kicked out of
Heaven, in his anger he remember the vase and told the vampires and
Raffious where the pieces of it were. The Scots got to one piece
first but just as they did, Rex’s warriors also got to the second
piece at the very same time. Raffious at that point, hadn’t been
interested in it. He was too deeply engrossed with his plan of
creating werewolves, and hadn’t thought of a way to use it for
himself by that stage.

----------

Up in Scotland trading for the vase, Angus
said to Raffious that he would do the deal, but first the story he
was offering would need to be verified. So Raffious told him which
priest was responsible and where his cathedral was, but kept back
some information incase Angus tried to double cross him. The Scots
leader had also been assured that he would be the only one to hear
about the story too.

When they had verified the story and then
honored the agreement, as they were handing over the vase as a
parting gift, Raffious couldn’t resist causing Rex’s coven even
more problems by warning Angus that his coven were going to attack
him. He even then went one better and gave them the exact date and
time of the attack too. Angus smiled back at him and nodded
appreciatively of the information, mentally linking it with an
illegible email that he had received 85 years before.

The broken up email had said something about
‘TV,’ and ‘ATTACK YOUR COVEN’ in it, which had been very alarming
to them, as it hadn’t named the coven that it was referring to.
After intense investigation, they still never managed to discover
what the emails complete message was. The senders return address
had been blocked too.

Raffious smiled inwardly when Angus said
about the email, as he knew who had sent it.

With regards handing over the vase though,
Angus had been cautious of being tricked by Raffious the time
shifter, because he knew just how easy he could vanish. He was also
aware that as vampires they could only ever travel backwards in
time, yet Raffious could leap forwards too. With this in mind they
had triple checked his story first.

Angus had ordered one of his most loyal
vampires called Longinus to jump back in time and told him that
when he arrived in the year 2014, he was to confirm the story was
true. After he had then Raffious would bring him back to their
year. If they had completed their other checks by then, they would
give him the vase.

Only whilst preparing to jump back to 2014,
Raffious and Longinus also did their own secret deal between
themselves. Longinus had showed a lot of interest in time travel
and also said that apart from disliking Angus, he was tired of the
coven too. Hearing this, Raffious thought it was great because he
had been looking for another servant; a top quality guy who was
strong and powerful to infiltrate Rex’s coven for him. He offered
Longinus the same time travel deal as he had with the two other two
vampires that Rex had killed previously.

He told him that he would give him the very
same powers of time travel that he had, and explained that with
them, he would be able to leap forwards or backwards in time too.
Only Raffious then told him he would have to do something for him
first though.

Even though Longinus had been extremely
excited about the prospects of the offer he had also been extremely
cautious that it wasn’t a trap too. He wanted to be completely sure
that Raffious wouldn’t tell Angus if he accepted, because he knew
what the punishment would be, death. Raffious had assured him that
it wasn’t a trap and explained that soon he would have the first
piece of the vase, only the second was piece was heavily guarded
and that he couldn’t get it on his own.

Curious, Longinus asked what he would have to
do for him then?

Raffious saw he was extremely eager, so he
told him, ‘If I give you the most sacred powerful gift of time
travel that no other vampire has, then the price will be high.’

Longinus didn’t really care about the price
at all. All he cared about was that with it, he would be able to
disappear and none of the covens would be able to find him.

‘What is the price?’ he asked.

‘OK, for it, you must join another coven and
then steal the other part of the vase from them, plus you have to
tell Angus that the story I am selling is true without us going to
verify it first.’

‘DEAL’ He had said without even considering
it for a second.

As soon as he had left the Scots and then
kept the first part of the deal lying to his old leader Angus,
Raffious then told him who the new coven was going to be. He also
said to him, how he would be able to persuade Rex to let him join
them, when he went for the interview.

Fear had raced through Longinus’s brain
though as the stories of just how barbaric and evil the white coven
were under Rex’s rule, then re-emerged to taunt him. He was
actually so apprehensive inside about seeing Rex, that he almost
tried to cancel the deal. He didn’t though because he didn’t want
to be on the run from Angus with no protection. He was well aware
that if they let him join them that Angus would never dare starting
another war by coming for him there.

Raffious said to him that when he went to see
Rex though, it was imperative to offer him the same story about the
priest and nun having a baby together that he had sold Angus. He
also said to tell them that they could blackmail the church with it
too.