Outside Hell

by Milo Spires

  Closing his eyes he’d breathed in deeply, and then with it he’d conjured a swirling mist in his mind. Then as it had cleared, he’d been able to see the silhouette of the chopper as it was flying away from him. Only and at the same time the pine trees all around him had visitors and they were from hell. The shadows were moving and from them, suddenly even more sinister shapes had appeared that coalesced together, taking the three dimensional shape of demons. Only and with his mind still in deep thought he’d not seen them, and then as they’d rapidly approached him they’d started screaming.

  Then as Dracus had looked and seen their dark ominous shapes flying across the snow towards him, and without a second to spare he’d leapt out of the deep snow that he was standing in and ran full charge through the blast area, desperately trying to escape them.

  Chapter 19 – The Bavarian Monster

  Laouse walked down the long concrete passageway that led out to the entrance of his secret lab underneath Kölnbrein Dam in Austria. The ceiling was slightly arched and either side of him apart from the pure concrete that was all around him, there were low wattage lamps at head height spaced twenty feet apart, that were hidden behind yellow plastic covers.

  As he’d reached the end of the passageway that had a strange dull echo and was bordering on half a mile in length, the Austrian vampire clasped his hands around the heavy steel spin handle that was on the door in front of him. Then as he’d started to crank it around to the left, the mechanism had a metallic, metal against metal grinding sound every time he’d forced the handle around to the left.

  Then after three complete turns, he’d finally pushed hard and the round doorway that was like a submarines entrance, swung out on its massive hinges and opened to the right. As the cold and somewhat refreshing air came in, the light from the stars above that was reflecting off the waters in the stream some hundreds of feet below him, also came in and gently lit up the first few feet inside the tunnels entrance.

  To look at him at just over 6ft tall, his shoulder length hair was dark and apart from being in perfect condition, it also applied a frame to his strikingly handsome features. His eyes were dark too and his jawline subtle and typically Teutonic in the way that it curved towards his blood red lips and shiny white teeth.

  Laouse had on a pair of black shoes and grey trousers that had a perfect crease running down the front. On his upper half and covering his muscular frame, he was wearing a full-length white lab coat with a yellow HB pencil sticking up out of his breast pocket.

  The weather in the valley outside as he’d smiled at his visitor waiting to be let in, was freezing cold and the sky was vibrantly clear as it washed downwards with a surreal glow from the heavens above.

  Standing there some ten paces outside, and blocking a huge amount of the view in front of him, stood the Bavarian monster Claudius.

  They’d met briefly in Paris at the Palace de Versailles a couple of days previously. Laouse had seen Claudius approaching the vampire Heir Volkerdauphine as he’d spoken on stage in the Hall of Mirrors, moments after the mini Phantom of the Opera ball had finished.

  Claudius had been furious with Heir Volkerdauphine in front of hundreds of vampires, because he’d forgotten to mention about a finger that had been found frozen inside a parcel out in Romania.

  It was discovered at one of the sites where not only vampires had gone missing from, but also Claudius’ son too. The Bavarian monster standing eight feet tall as he’d stormed up to the stage dressed in fur skins, had insinuated that Heir Volkerdauphine had not forgotton to mention it but done so on purpose. The crowds had all seen Heir Volkerdauphines face drop fifty shades whiter and after stuttering like his batteries in his mouth were failing, it had seemed as if maybe Claudius’ accusations might have been valid too.

  The finger had been Heir Volkerdauphine’s mothers finger.

  Adolph had brutally amputated it to ensure that Heir Volkerdauphine had kept his word of snitching on the location of vampire’s hideouts in Romania. A deal that Adolph had struck with the vampire when he’d been a prisoner of Adolph’s, after being caught still alive in the gas chambers out in Auswitzch prisoner of war camp. It was the only way that Heirr Volkerdauphine could leave the jails, and also in turn then hope that after helping Adolph’s soldiers catch hundreds of vampires for experiments, that he could ever see his mother released too. That is if Adolph had kept to his word, but the German leader had never intended on releasing the mother, regardless of how many vampires Heir Volkerdauphine had helped his soldiers catch for experiments. Adolph for obvious reasons never told Heir Volkerdauphine that part though. Heirr Volkerdaupine had spent many years extremely sad because he was killing his own kind, and also because of it he had no one that he could turn to either. Then as a preventative measure so that he didn’t know the location of the secret hanger, when they’d released him from the cells he’d been blindfolded just in case he’d ever tried to stage a massive raid on the place, trying to rescue his mother.

  Back in the secret lab and after receiving a worrying phone call from Claudius, Laouse had invited him to come there to discuss everything in greater detail. Claudius had accepted Laouses offer, and then owing to the extreme gravity of the situation regarding vampires being kidnapped and also his son’s own whereabouts being unknown, he’d left for the lab immediately.

  Laouse and Claudius had shaken hands, and then as they’d gone inside the concrete tunnel and to block out the outside world, Laouse had closed the heavy metal door behind them.

  The steel door on the outside was disguised with bushes and painted a rock color to aide in the labs secrecy.

  Once they’d entered the lab and walked past the rows of metal tables that had various bits of equipment and microscopes spread out across them, and after passing the rifle room where the Austrian tested materials for being bulletproof, they’d entered Laouse’s office.

  Laouse poured out two glasses of water and then after offering a seat to Claudius, he taken his own seat opposite him.

  The office with its cream carpet and dark teak desk that was directly in front of the doorway; was lined with aluminum strips from floor to ceiling and glass panels between them, that looked out into the labs on the other side.

  Then as soon as Claudius had taken a sip of the refreshing water from the reservoir above, the giant vampire had rested his massive hands on the tabletop, and then began to explain everything in greater detail.

  Lause sat there in his chair and listened to the horrible news that confirmed his suspicions regarding Heir Volkerdauphine, and those of Kaine and Regina too.

  Claudius started by saying that after he’d stormed up to the stage in Paris, and then moments after addressing the crowds, Heir Volkerdauphine had slunk away and disappeared.

  Laouse nodded as he’d remembered the scene.

  Claudius then told him that he’d tried to find Heir Volkerdauphine, but everywhere he’d turned the vampire was nowhere to be seen.

  Claudius said that he’d then taken his search out of the Hall of Mirrors room and gone outside the palaces main entrance. He said that as stepped down of the main steps between the concrete columns into the shingle, a security guard had seen him looking for someone and stepped out from the shadows asking him if he’d needed help. Claudius had told the guard that he was looking for Heir Volkerdauphine. The guard had replied that he hadn’t seen him since earlier on in the evening when he was talking to a human over by the pine trees. Claudius said to Laouse that he’d remembered looking across to where the guard was pointing and couldn’t believe that he was right, because the pine trees were some way away across the wet grass.

  The guard had assured him that he’d seen Heir Volkerdauphine with this human, and then described the man as being about six feet tall with a stern face and dressed in black. He’d said that the clothes he was wearing looked like they were military and that he’d been wearing black boots too.

  The guard had also said that he’d seen them shake hands but that Heir Volkerda
uphine had slowly raised his and hadn’t looked too happy. The man had then surreptitiously sneaked back through the rows of pine trees and when followed he’d snuck out the side gate. Then he’d crossed the busy street and climbed in a black Range Rover with another black Range Rover parked behind. He’d said that the vehicles were full of men all with similarly stern expressions.

  They’d then run the plates straight away but they were coming back as unlisted on the police database.

  Claudius had thanked him for the information and then slipped the guard his business card and asked him that should he see Heir Volkerdauphine again, would he call him. The guard had assured him that he would and then they’d parted.

  Claudius not long afterwards as he was going back up the main steps, then saw something out of the corner of his eye and went to investigate.

  As he’d walked over to look near Laouse’s chopper some forty feet away, suddenly he’d heard crowds running down the steps behind him with great urgency. Turning around and forgetting what he was looking for, he’d been taken back by everyone screaming about a portal demon being inside.

  A moment later Claudius had said that he’d seen his wife and his friends charge outside too, and then as they’d jumped into his jeep, and not wishing to find out if the portal demon was true, they’d fast tracked out of there.

  The next day he’d received a phone call on his office line and it had been the vampire security guard that he’d given his card to. The vampires voice was etched with anger and also concern too. The guard had said that when they’d gone down to the security hut next the palaces Golden Gates, the two security guards that should have been there, had vanished. He’d said that one of them was his friend so he’d thought it strange and started looking around for him. Then after looking down into the gravel and seeing blood glistening in the stones from the street lamp just rearing its head above the twenty feet high wall, he’d run inside the hut and played back the video camera. The hidden camera up in the pine trees opposite the hut had caught a black transit van that came in, and then after the two occupants had spoken to his friend and the other security guard, the occupants of the van had fired tasselly like darts into them.

  The guard has said in a worried voice that he couldn’t believe what he was seeing on the TV screen as he’d looked, and that even though the picture in black and white wasn’t that great as it played back, he’d seen his friend collapse into the gravel. The other guard had collapsed too but then a moment later they’d managed to get back up quite groggily and attack and kill the men in the van.

  The guard had also said that moments later the two black Range Rovers from outside had come screeching into the entrance and the men that were now also wearing ski masks, jumped out of the vehicles and shot his friend and the other guard with more tasselly things.

  Then after collapsing and not getting up, the men threw them in the back of the transit and two of them put their jackets on and remained by the hut posing as guards, whilst the van and the Range Rovers disappeared back out into the street.

  Claudius asked the guard if there was anything he could remember about the Range Rovers but the guard had said that according to the cameras, later they’d come back into the palace grounds shooting at Kaine and Regina’s Mustang but then never left the place.

  Laouse remembered being in the Mustang himself and hadn’t seen who was shooting at them from the gates as Regina was driving, but hearing Claudius saying this, he’d told Claudius that now he was starting to piece things together and that the news was very worrying indeed.

  Claudius said that he didn’t know that Laouse was in the car too, and the Austrian nodded.

  The Bavarian monster looked across the desk at Laouse and furrowed his brow. Then he said that there was something else too.

  He’d said that the guard saw on the TV screen that the palace was on fire too, and then Laouse interrupted him briefly and confirmed it.

  Laouse said that he was inside the Hall of mirrors with Kaine and Regina and Satan who was burning up the place after everyone left screaming about the portal demon. He’d said that they’d only managed to escape because Dracus had turned up and shot Satan in the neck with four of his cursed arrows. Then as the prince of darkness was struggling to resist the powers trying to paralyse him, that they’d escaped the room by using one of the bowman’s magic portals.

  Laouse had said that the portal that they were trying to escape through hadn’t worked though, and that it had only taken them outside the room and then dumped then in the shingle by the palaces main steps. He’d said that the bowman said afterwards in the Mustang that Satan had sucked its energy back towards him, and stopped them from leaving whilst the palace was roaring in flames.

  Claudius having it now confirmed by Laouse that after he’d left with his wife that the palace was actually in flames, he’d instantly had a deeply confused expression blast across his face. Then as he’d rubbed his thick black wiry beard, a moment later he’d said to Laouse, “Hmmm I see, then maybe the guard was telling the truth.”

  Laouse wondered what he’d meant by that and asked him to explain.

  Claudius said that when the security guard on the phone had told him about the flames that he’d already left the place, but to hear that the beautiful palace was destroyed it had caused him to be quite angry. Then when the guard a second later had said that even though everyone and the security was running for their lives to escape the portal demon, he’d actually gone back up the pathway to the palace and found that it wasn’t on fire at all.

  Laouse looked across his desk at Claudius and remembered the reason why too. The angel Adbiel had come down from Heaven holding his gleaming chain and a key to the bottomless pit. Satan had taken one look at it and then fled back into Hell.

  Laouse, Kaine and Regina had been hiding in the bushes and seen the angel as he’d appeared in a garish bright flash of light. The angel had past his hand across the sky in front of himself and with it, suddenly the flames had instantly disappeared and the palace was undamaged and returned to its former glory.

  He told Claudius and the big vampire just looked back at him dumbfounded and completely baffled.

  “An angel you say?” Claudius remarked in his massively deep and gruff outback voice.

  Laouse nodded as then suddenly he threw his chair back and stood up.

  A second later as rage swept then across the Austrian vampires face, suddenly he brought his arms down in his white lab coat, and smashed the office table in front of him, completely in half.

  His unfinished cup of water and his phone plus paperwork and in and out tray scattered everywhere.

  Laouse was fuming as he’d tried to link Heir Volkerdauphine’s strange behavior that night, and the fact that the security guard had told Claudius, that he’d been seen speaking surreptitiously to the soldier who was responsible for kidnapping vampires. He was also thoroughly pissed off because it was Heir Volkerdauphine who’d arranged the night in Paris too. The fact that it was him who had brought everyone together to discuss vampires going missing, and that now he might be involved in the whole sordid thing, it just didn’t make any sense at all.

  Laouse vowed that if he met Heirr Volkerdauphine again and found out that he was involved in it all, that he’d inject him with the most painful of drugs, and then watch him as he’d died suffering the most heinous of pain.

  Laouse bent down and picked up the phone, then said with his fangs protruding nearly an inch from his gums, “I’m calling Kaine and Regina, maybe they can shed some light on this.”

  Claudius sat back in his chair and watched as LAouse punched in the numbers for his friends place in Devil’s Dyke, England.

  A moment of silence happened and then Laouse said as he’d heard a strange voice coming back at him from down the phone, “Sorry I must have the wrong number,” only the person he was talking to said, “are you looking for Kaine.”