The Dark Messenger (27 page)

‘We need a prisoner to
question. And this one has Raffious’ bracelet on him,’ he said,
pointing down to the warrior’s left arm.

‘What? How is he wearing
that?’ she snarled.

‘Don’t know, but I intend
to find out. Quick--can you pass me two grenades from that box over
there?’ he said to her, pointing to the corner of the garage by the
stairs.

After passing him two silver grenades, she
went to get a rag for his wrist.

‘Get in there!’ someone outside shouted.

‘Here goes again!’ Kaine
screamed as he spun around and prepared himself for the onslaught
that never came. Then hearing a scream from outside clarified the
reasons too. A warrior must have refused his orders to attack, and
in doing so he found himself punished with death.

Kaine furrowed his brow at
their tactics of killing those who refused their foolish
orders.

Realizing the next wave of
attacks were seconds from happening, he threw two grenades out the
door at the same time. Together the explosion shook the ceiling of
his garage, and dust fell down from everywhere.

‘That will make them think
twice.’ He said as he inhaled a mouthful of dust and started
coughing.

Regina asked him if he was
ok and he nodded. Then she passed him two more grenades to reload
whilst he spoke to the prisoner.

‘How many of you came here tonight?’ he
demanded.

‘One hundred,’ the warrior
replied, his voice stronger and clearer now.

Kaine looked around again,
and after quickly counting the bodies in the garage and guessing at
the number of dead outside, he calculated there might be about
eighty warriors still to fight.

Ducking, he launched two
more grenades out the doorway. The garage rocked violently with the
explosion.

‘Darling, there’s four
grenades left,’ Regina said with panic in her voice.

‘No problem, I have a
plan.’ He turned to look at the prisoner again. ‘Tell me more about
this idiot Longinus,’ he said.

‘Longinus has been in this time, following
the woman, Jenny. He saw you carrying her from the hospital and
trailed you here.’

Hearing this, Kaine was furious, and also
embarrassed, which showed as a look of thunder passed across his
face.

‘What?’ he shouted, hardly
believing he had been so stupid as to lure these warriors to his
own house. He even remembered saying to his wife to be careful at
the hospital because there might be another vampire
around.

‘Where is he now?’ he
demanded, as he thought about tearing Longinus apart for
outsmarting him.

Before his new slave could
answer he heard a gun being loaded right outside the door. He heard
the unmistakable sound of a magazine being rammed up inside the
thing.

Realizing grave danger was
imminent! He screamed,

‘Down!’ as he dived to the
floor and moments later bullets zipped overhead, tearing huge
chunks of plaster from the walls.

Regina screamed, and Kaine
turned around to see that her arm had been hit and was now wide
open from a bullet wound at the top of her shoulder.

Covering himself with the
body of a dead vampire, Kaine grabbed a sword and inaccurately
flung it at the door. The vampire saw it coming though and leapt
out of the way.

‘Throw me a grenade,’
Kaine telepathically messaged Regina but there was no
time.

Turning around she threw a
single grenade out the door herself. A second later as it exploded,
half a vampire leg and a buckets worth of blood, blasted back into
the garage.

Kaine grinned.

‘I’m very impressed,’ he
said to Regina, his voice full of deep admiration. He wondered if
the vampire who had just died might disagree though, as his tunnel
of fire had sucked his conscious thoughts into hell.

Realizing the grenades were
all but finished, Kaine said he had a plan. He said he was going to
blow the garage up using the last grenades. She looked puzzled but
he pointed to a tall cylinder full of oxy acetylene welding gas.
Regina looked back him with a look that suggested
you must be fucking joking
, only his facial expressions suggested otherwise.

‘Can you and Becky take this fucking prisoner
upstairs please.‘

Regina smiled to him as she
grabbed the prisoner’s ankle and then Becky grabbed the other.
Kaine noticed the vampire resisting and dealt with him accordingly.
Now fast asleep from the brutal downwards punch he had received,
both the women then
charged up the stairs,
dragging him in their wake.

Kaine looked down at his dogs, they were
filthy.

Pointing to the stairs, he told them to
follow. Charging across the floor without question, both of them
twisted at the last second as they flew up the stairs.

Walking over to the gas bottle, he ripped off
the regulator valve and in doing so he released the gas at
unbelievable pressure. The smell of it rushing out into the room
was disgusting, and he thrust his hand across his mouth to avoid
breathing in the vapor.

Turning around it was his time to leave. One
spark, one sword, one bullet from the enemy flying into the garage
now with the extremely explosive gas in the air would be enough to
blow him to kingdom come.

Charging up the stairs, he paused at the top
to do his impersonation of an old Arnie movie but alas, without the
cigar sadly. Flicking out the pins on the two grenades he was
holding, he grinned before saying ‘Ill be back.’ Then he dropped
them behind himself and they spun and bounced carefree back down
into the garage.

Aware the moment for copying scenes from old
movies was well and truly gone, he bolted like an athlete across
the floor he was on. Reaching the stairs he grasped the banister
and flung himself around.

Suddenly there was a garish white flash and
everything in his mind went blank.

Vius had been furious as he stood outside the
doorway to Kaine and Regina’s house on the hillsides of Devil’s
Dyke, because at that stage everything seemed to have been going so
terribly wrong.

He had just killed his best
friend and loyal captain Voitek believing him to have slain their
leader, only moments later to have found that he hadn’t killed Rex
at all. What he had seen was just an orchestrated black magic
trick, created by an old man with a long knee-length white beard,
and that somehow
like an amateur
fool
he had believed.

Then the mission that should have been
nothing more than a complete success, was actually failing
abysmally, as his warriors were dying all around him in
astronomical numbers.

This was because somehow
inside the garage entrance--which had taken them a long time to
break down--there was an obviously highly trained
warrior—
a completely mad
fucker
, who, with the help of two vicious
dogs, was tearing his warriors to pieces.

The first wave of warriors had gone in with
such energy, furious and fully prepared to kill anything they had
found in their way. He had seen their enthusiasm and had smiled
proudly, but within minutes the sickening screams that had come
from the garage had made even his own spine tingle.

Then the second wave of warriors who had
entered the garage bravely and without question had also succumbed
to a vicious end. They were savagely torn to pieces too.

As the third wave was preparing to go in,
there was the profound feeling coming back at him from his warriors
to just use machine guns, but he had ignored it. His reasoning was
simply to avoid the desperately embarrassing stories in the future.
Stories of how his men under his command had to abandon their
traditional swords and cheat against one brave vampire. He did
however let them use their shields, and at the time had every faith
they would have been victorious.

Then when this group had failed too and was
also torn to pieces, apart from the deep anger, which had by then
spread exponentially throughout him, also moral in the ranks had
hit an all time low. Warriors were making dire comments about
leaving and refusing to enter the garage.

At that moment he had tried to restore their
beliefs in success, and then decided to go down and personally
order them to attack. He had felt sure they would have appreciated
this rather than having the orders coming from their captains. Only
they had refused his orders and stood fast without moving.

Then to restore their respect and to make
them never doubt or ignore another order of his again, he had taken
out his sword and killed the first warrior in the cue.

Only when the slain warrior’s body had hit
the ground, the vampire in the garage must have heard him, because
two silver grenades were hurled out the door. Then when they
exploded, to add insult to injury, and to make an already bad
situation far worse, the force of the explosion had thrown him, and
him alone, head first into the bushes. The whole thing had been a
deeply embarrassing affair.

But it didn’t get any better at that stage
because when he had clambered back out of the bramble thorns, and
with the little bastards stuck deep in his flesh, he had been
confronted by one of his subordinates, Captain Ognian. The goliath
of a warrior had walked up to him with a disgruntled look upon his
face, and told him he was pathetic. He had screamed in his face to
stand down from his command.

Of course he had turned around for support
from the group as a whole, feeling sure they would stand behind him
but they had looked away.

Then as he had scraped undergrowth off his
legs and chest, he had leapt back up and screamed at them, ‘What
none of you will support me?’

Their lack of response was shocking and made
it harrowingly clear to him that a revolution was looming.

---------

Now though in the present, and lost for words
as rage like an insect then began to worm and burrow its way inside
his brain, Vius spun around and demanded to know their reasons for
the revolt.

Suddenly two more grenades bounced out the
door and exploded. Their lethal shards of silver like mini missiles
flew in all directions and killed four more warriors that were
within the blast radius.

Captain Ognian was furious as he glared down
at the body parts. It seemed that, so far, it was only his warriors
who were being killed.

‘I demand you stand down from your command,’
Ognian said in a low voice. Then with anger etched across his face,
he pulled out two swords and stood there shaking in fury. The wind
was whipping through his long dark hair that perfectly framed his
hardened features.

Ognian was one of four captains underneath
Vius. He was much more masterful and powerful in battle than Vius
was, yet through the years for some reason he had never been
promoted higher in the Elite warriors ranks. This had for some
years pained him, and it drove a wedge between him and Vius. Of
course he never let it show for obvious reasons, as Rex wouldn’t
condone such immature behavior. Ognian, being the lesser, would
have simply become a torture victim for the next time Rex got
bored. Knowing this, he had always kept his mouth shut.

When they had been in France at Brius’
palace and Rex was nearly killed, Ognian had thought that Vius
would have been punished with death for disobeying their leader,
but sadly only an eye was removed.

Ognian was a monster that stood nearly eight
feet tall. He towered over Vius by a clear foot in height and was
almost twice as wide as him. In training, grappling and
hand-to-hand combat, Ognian never had any issues slamming him
down--even when he tried to cheat by opening his wings in his face
the captain got the upper hand. He was stronger at sword fighting
too, which owed primarily to the simple fact that he could attack
with much more power behind his strikes. Often when Vius tried to
block a move by holding his sword out horizontally, the massive
power in Ognian’s downward strike either smashed both blades or
sent the pathetic Vius sprawling.

So fighting Vius now if he chose, which he
doubted his superior would accept, would ultimately result in his
death. The possibility of killing him was high, and with Rex and
Mietioc not being around now either, there would be no one to
complain or say otherwise as he stepped up into the number one
position as leader of the Elite warriors.

Dress-wise, Ognian favored thick leather. He
wore this on his legs, across his back, and down his sides. Then
across his chest he had a breastplate of steel, and down his arms
the leather was ribbed and heavily bonded to the leather
underneath, forming a flexible but effective defense against sword
swipes.