The Dark Messenger (43 page)

She grinned back at him and nodded. He then
turned around and reached forwards to open the massively thick,
solid stone door that was in front of him. Again she was witness to
another example of the strength that vampires had over humans, as
she realized just how thick the door was.

‘Jenny, I have to leave you inside and close
the door behind you, but I won’t be long. If I don't return, walk
left, keeping your back to the walls. When you reach that sign over
there, walk ten paces forwards and turn towards the stairs. The
handle for the door is on the right-hand side behind the first
brick jutting out, okay? You won’t need it though, because I will
be back in a second.’ He paused to look at her before he added, ‘Do
you understand the directions, darling? If you make one mistake,
the traps could kill you.’

Jenny hugged herself tightly, feeling herself
starting to tremble again. ‘I do—but is it not pitch black in there
when you close the door? How will I see the sign?’ she asked, her
voice betraying her fear. It wasn’t just the dark; she was thinking
about being left all alone too.

‘Sorry,’ Kaine said, suddenly remembering
that she couldn’t see in the dark. ‘I forgot, even though Regina
reminded me earlier when she had said she was going to make torches
for you. We have no time; sorry, just wait inside against the wall
and don’t move. I won’t be long, I promise.’

‘Where are you going?’ she asked but he said
nothing just smiled. Then she took a deep breath and crept a few
steps tentatively into the darkness before turning back to look at
him, but he never replied. Instead, she watched as the stone door
closed upon her and pitch darkness became her new evil friend.
Within seconds, as the door shut, she found that she had forgotten
everything he had said.

Had he said to crawl left, or was it
right?

Suddenly she began to feel
more scared than she had ever been in her life. Looking down, she
realized that she couldn’t even see her own hands in the inky
blackness. There was also a terrible smell, one that was seriously
disgusting.
It smells like rotting
corpses
, she thought to herself but then
smiled briefly as it dawned on her that she hadn’t ever smelt a
rotting corpse before, so how would she know. The thought made her
giggle, which only got worse as she mentally elaborated on it. She
was close to laughing hysterically, and hoped that Kaine would be
back soon.

Kaine had gone to get his iPad, and thought
he had left it in the dining room after his old friend Raffious had
become his number-one enemy at dinner.

‘Damn!’ he said to himself as he charged into
the dining room, desperately trying to remember where his iPad was.
‘Think!’ he told himself. ‘Jenny had been crying and ran
downstairs, then Regina had raced after her and I was furious with
Raffious for not warning me of the atta....’

‘Yes!’ he cried as it suddenly came to him—it
was on the side by the door!

But it wasn’t there.
Someone had moved it. Then, milliseconds later, he saw it lying
face down on their sofa. Running over, he grabbed it and quickly
logged in to their
eyes in the sky
drone, which was outside—he was hoping to arm it.
As he entered the passcode and flicked through a couple of screens,
he was startled by the sound of heavy feet moving around on the
floor beneath him.

Just as he was going to
leave, a thought crossed his mind.
These
fools came to my house, and I have to run? I am the fool here,
aren’t I! Well screw them.

Suddenly everything that had happened and all
the immense pressures over the past few days, finally got to
him.

‘Okay, so they want a fight? Let’s give them
one!’ he shouted as his anger then metastasized into an
unbelievable, absolutely wild, furious rage.

He charged to the top of the stairs and stood
with his hand poised over the door handle in front of him, planning
to surprise them as they came up. He knew that fighting hoards of
them would be extremely tiring, and perhaps he would die trying,
but he was furious at their threatening his family. The rage again
exploded within him and his ivory colored, predatory fangs then
thrust down so far that they almost matched the fangs of his
Paleolithic ancestors.

Suddenly Regina messaged him.

‘The tunnel has got smaller and smaller
darling, and now we are trapped in here. We can see the fields but
can’t dig through because we can’t move and the earth is full of
flint rock. We are stuck, darling. Please hurry—we can’t get out,’
she messaged. Then she abruptly ended the connection, knowing that
it might not be safe to distract him.

‘Damn!’ he screamed. He was
about to retrace his steps, but suddenly the door in front of him
burst open and he had no choice but to start the fight there and
then. Desperate to help his wife out of her terrible situation as
quickly as he could, he smashed hard into his attackers,
screaming
Fucking have it you
bastards
as he piled into them. Killing
two before they could even get off the top of the narrow stairs, he
then spun around and threw their lifeless bodies down the stairs,
with such force that the others coming up were knocked backwards
like bowling skittles.

Seeing and opportunity arise, he then took
it.

He spun around and ran. Behind him he could
hear their struggles to clear the dead so they could get up the
stairs, and as he turned the next corner, the sound behind him
suggested that some of them had done just that.

Arriving back at the door to the traps room,
he stopped for the mere second it took to slide the bolt back,
before he ripped it open and dived inside. As he turned around fast
with the intention of sliding across the slam bolt, he found that
he was too late. Two vampires were rushing towards him, and as they
were almost upon him, all he could do was to move out of their way,
side-stepping their headlong charge as they ran straight past and
into into the center of the room behind him.

----------

Meanwhile Becky and Regina, back inside the
tunnel were finding it almost like hell being inside the
exceptionally tiny air vent.

It was so tight that the only way Regina
could move forward’s was to reluctantly shuffle herself along using
her elbows. Her hands had no space to be anywhere except close and
tight either side of her face, and she was unable to bring her
knees up underneath herself, due to her back pressing hard up
against the ceiling.

Not long after her journey began, she had
realized that something was touching her from behind. She smiled as
she realized what that something was—There was a dog’s wet nose
gently prodding her bum, and she could feel warm breath on her
legs. It made her happy for a moment, knowing that her babies Bruce
and Solomon were with her. Sadly though, she was unable to turn her
head to look back at them, as she tried to catch up with Becky who
was now some distance ahead.

Desperately trying to remain focused and
keeping her foreboding thoughts subdued for the time being, she
made up ground as fast as she could, with the dogs following
closely behind. As she reached Becky, she could see that she was
having difficulties of her own.

‘Becky, wait for me!’ she whispered sternly
hoping that she hadn’t been heard by anyone else. She knew that
Kaine would have left through the traps room by now, but she didn’t
know if the evil vampires had gotten into their house—if they had,
she didn’t want to let them know where she was.

‘How are you doing?’ she asked Becky,
lowering that stern whisper to a softer version.

‘Alright I suppose. Only the tunnel is
getting narrower and I don't know if we will be able to get much
further. My shoulders are touching both sides, and it’s not just
earth anymore, there are bloody rocks too. If we can’t get through,
how the hell are we going to be able to get back with the dogs
behind us?’ she asked, sounding quite worried.

‘You can feel that breeze coming from up
ahead, right? So try staying focused and hope to God we can get
through. If we can’t, well, Bruce and Solomon know how to crawl
backwards, so I wouldn’t worry,’ Regina said, hoping that her words
of encouragement made Becky feel better.

‘Can you message Kaine and Jenny and see how
they are doing, please? I am worried about them,’ Becky
requested.

‘Sorry darling. I am worried about them too,
but I can’t. If he’s fighting and I message him, it could risk his
life. Now if he messages us, then I will let you know, but I can’t
message him.’

Regina winced suddenly at a sharp pain in her
right elbow. Looking down, she could see it had a deep cut, and
realized that she had just stupidly pushed up against one of the
rocks Becky had warned her about.

‘Shit! That’s all I bloody needed,’ she
muttered.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh nothing. A flint stone just sliced my
elbow, and it’s bleeding quite badly. But don't worry, it will stop
in a few minutes,’ she said.

Changing the subject, she said, ‘Hey on a
brighter note, I think you might be able to understand my
telepathic thoughts now. Wanna try?’ She hoped to keep their minds
busy so that they wouldn’t dwell on their current situation.

‘Sure, but how? When you and Kaine messaged
each other before, I felt nothing. Do you think I really can? It’s
not too early, I mean, is it?’

‘Don’t know,’ she said, wondering about that
herself.

Regina tried to remember back to when Kaine
had saved her life all those years before. The memories were faded,
but she could remember a few things.

After some time together, they had both
figured out that they could communicate together by using their
thoughts alone. The first time she had ever received anything
telepathically was when they were making love and he was inside
her. She had remembered hearing his soft seductive voice saying
that he loved her, but realized his lips were not moving as she
heard it. On various occasions, over the ensuing weeks, she had
heard other sentences from him, and had been starting to question
her own sanity. Then one day she had told him about it, deeply
worried that he would just laugh and say that she had lost her mind
or something. To her surprise though he hadn’t; quite the opposite,
really. He had said that he was thinking he was going crazy
himself, because the exact same thing was happening to him too.

She wondered how she would
go about trying to get Becky to hear her thoughts though, knowing
it would have to be by a different method than the one she had used
with Kaine. Laughing inwardly, she thought,
I’m sure as hell not going to be making love to
her.

Regina considered the idea that it might be
something lovers could have but no one else could, some kind of
strange bonding between their minds or something. Thinking about it
that way, she highly doubted whether Becky would be ever able to
hear her thoughts. Then she suddenly remembered Arquin, that lying
bastard that Kaine had killed for telepathically reading their
minds. If he could do it, then she must be able to also.

‘Okay, so I’m sending you a message, I
think,’ Regina thought. ‘I'm thinking about your funny-shaped bum
in that dress, because it’s stuffed up close to my face.’ She
paused for a second before saying aloud, ‘Did you get
anything?’

‘Nope, nothing. I felt nothing,’ Becky
grumbled, disappointed. ‘Damn! I was really was hoping that we
could speak to each other that way. I mean, that would be so cool!
I could throw my mobile away and not have to pay next month’s line
rental too.’

Both of them burst out laughing.

Suddenly there was a noise down at the end of
the tunnel from where they’d just entered. They froze into silence,
hoping that their ears had been lying to them. But it came again,
and there was no mistaking it. Something was quietly moving around
in the room that they had just been in.

Regina tapped Becky’s leg and whispered,
‘Shush! Don’t move!’

The dogs growled, and Regina knew there was
nothing she could do about them. Poor Solomon and Bruce wanted like
hell to kill them, but were jammed in just as tightly as the women
were. She feared the worst, and the worst came.

The quiet movements they had heard, suddenly
turned into a massive noise as someone grabbed the heavy old steel
door and threw it out of the way. A nasty, evil voice then echoed
down the tunnel towards them:

‘I SEE YOU.’

Chapter 36 – Liar

Mietioc’s
memory had finally come back to him, and although Hoidrious had
said he knew nothing about the ambush that had killed him and the
Elite warriors, Mietioc now knew undoubtedly that he was lying.

Hoidrious and Angus
had known each other, and very well too. They had
always kept their business relationship top secret though. It was
so clandestine in fact that, for over a thousand years, only two of
Hoidrious’ most loyal guards were ever told about it. These were
Loicheonk and Marchilla, two 7-foot-tall vampires who went
everywhere with him.

In the cells, even though they were masked at all times,
Longinus knew who they were and also knew their names too. Only
through his flippant attitude did he choose to refer to them at all
times as,
the goons
.