The Dark Messenger

by Milo Spires

  ‘I, er, um, don't actually know. I found her here unconscious. She woke up for a few seconds, then she passed out again,’ Jenny answered through her tears. Then she gazed imploringly at the ambulance worker and asked, ‘Will she be alright? Tell me she will…’

  Seeing that Jenny was clearly in shock, the man put his hand on her shoulder and asked gently, ‘We need to know, darling--has your friend taken anything? Maybe pills of some kind? Can you tell us?’

  ‘Sorry, I don't know. But I doubt it.’ Jenny gazed at her unconscious friend’s face. ‘I just got here myself and found her like this.’

  Tracy moved round to Jenny’s side, and Jenny buried her face into Tracy’s shoulder as another outburst of tears followed.

  The man who had been checking Becky’s vitals sat back, and in an urgent voice said, ‘We must be quick. She’s alive, but there’s hardly any pulse.’ The two men stood and hurried to their equipment. ‘Everyone out of the way,’ he continued as they prepared to take Becky out. ‘We must get her to hospital quickly.’ They immediately lifted her onto a collapsible stretcher and within seconds were carrying her down the stairs.

  Jenny followed with Tracy, who asked after Becky was put into the ambulance if they could both go with her.

  ‘Only direct family and close friends can come,’ the driver replied.

  ‘I’m her best mate,’ Jenny said. ‘I’m the closest she’s got.”

  ‘Okay then, get in. But you will have to be quiet.’

  Jenny nodded gratefully and with a hug to Tracy, climbed into the back.

  Seconds later, the sirens were blaring and the ambulance was carving its way through traffic, heading for town.

  Chapter 6 - The Vision

  Kaine had not slept well at all that night and had lain awake for hours, his wife fast asleep next to him. He had woken up several times in the night, and had been wide-awake since 4 a.m because of a dream. It had seemed much more real, though, than a simple dream, he kept telling himself. This was much clearer than usual, and in it he was fighting werewolves. It just wouldn’t leave his mind! The visit to Rex’s coven, the room—those…creatures!

  Dreams are just dreams, he thought. He’d always believed that they were usually full of simple images that the mind had pieced together from the past, letting your imagination play with them whilst you slept. He was sure, though, that this was more than that—much, much more in fact. It had been so unbelievably clear.

  Kaine had experienced a vision once before, 500 years previously. It had shown him the vampires’ war against the werewolves, but the odd thing was that it hadn’t started yet. Everyone he told about the vision, except his wife, had simply laughed when he had suggested to them that it might have been a vision of the future. His dream, or premonition, or whatever it was, had shown him that there would be a war coming with beasts called ‘werewolves’. No one believed then that the werewolves would ever exist in the way he had seen in his vision, and that the beasts would kill so many of them. The war did happen though, just as his vision had shown him. Everything he had seen in it, the vampires he’d seen fall, and the massive vampire casualties had happened just as the dream had suggested.

  Restless and unable to get back to sleep, Kaine slipped out of bed and sat in a comfortable chair. His thoughts roamed as he gazed around the room, his mind settling on nothing in particular. As the minutes ticked by, he finally drifted back to sleep.

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  Kaine lived with his wife beneath an old, ruined brick building. The roofless monolith was a leftover from the British past, when a train line used to connect their area of Devils Dyke to one of Brighton’s sub-villages called Hangleton. He and his wife had moved into it completely unnoticed by the locals and had been there for nearly fifty years or so.

  The only one slight issue was the neighboring building, two hundred meters away, called The Devils Dyke public house. On weekends the area around it was busy with hang-gliders, dog walkers, runners, and the like. After dark, though, when he and his wife Regina were usually awake, the landscape was nearly always empty. There was only the wind whistling outside to let them know that they were not completely alone.

  The building was situated high up on the hillside, and looked out to the west above fields that were far below them. At night the view was simply amazing, with lights from peoples’ homes scattered romantically across the horizon. Kaine and Regina often sat up on the hillside, breathing in the gorgeous sea air and taking in the beautiful view around them.

  To the north, they could clearly see a long line of bright yellow lights from the fast road called the A23, which looked like a brightly-lit serpent that was crawling off and vanishing into the distance. The small village nearest to them, far below but no more than a mile away, was called Fulking. It had a small population, with only 250 people living there. In the center of the village was a beautiful little pub called The Shepherd and Dog, where the couple often found themselves enjoying a glass of wine or two in the early evenings, at least in the winter months when it was dark.

  Southerly, only a couple of miles away, was the sea. It could easily be seen from the ruined brick building during the daylight hours. Occasionally, Kaine and Regina would take in the view, wearing their skin wraps to protect themselves from the sun. This area of the seashore was a popular tourist attraction with a lot of history behind it, dating back as far as the Iron Age.

  On the other side of the hill in which their dwelling was buried was a famous valley known as Devil’s Dyke. It was boasted as being nearly the longest, deepest and widest ‘dry valley’ in the UK, often with a splendid living carpet of flowers and a full myriad of colorful insects. At one time, long before Kaine and Regina’s arrival, the valley also had a cable car, a vehicle that was precariously suspended 230 feet above the valley floor.

  Kaine and Regina had left the building above their house completely untouched, and used it as the perfect cover for their home below. Cows would come inside the ruin during the winter months to seek shelter from the salty sea winds outside, and Regina used to sometimes sit with them, just to let the time pass by.

  Their home was situated high up on the hillside offering a perfect vantage point should they ever be attacked, although this was only one minor reason for their choice. The main reason was for the magnificent views.

  There was only one room inside the ruined building and it was mostly covered in grass, mud and cow dung. The fact that it was roofless kept it fresh from smells. On the far left of the main entry was a small kiosk-sized room. Inside was a hidden doorway, and behind that was a spiral staircase leading down to a room that they called the ‘Traps Room'. This area was filled with deadly traps and left this way as a precaution against invaders. It had a violent smell inside too, which the couple ignored; they thought it quite matched the idea that enemies would die in there.

  Over in the far corner of this room was a small brick wall that jutted out, behind it there was another hidden doorway with a spiral staircase that led down into the couple’s gorgeous home. All the spiral staircases they had actually installed themselves so that if ever they were attacked, only a few of their enemies could get down at a time, giving Kaine and Regina a chance to fight back.

  There were no windows anywhere, but this was by no means any issue. Their home was in the beautiful countryside, and they knew it was far more secure this way. It had only one main entrance in, and their secret emergency way out on the lowest level, in what they called their garage.

  Kaine had installed cameras in many places outside. One of them was disguised as a brick, and he had placed it up high inside the old ruined building. It was wirelessly linked downstairs with the others that were also scattered around the place. They all streamed video to the couple’s iPads and the main iMac computer. The Devils Dyke pub camera was only a couple hundred meters away, and it looked across the expanse, providing backup to their top entrance camera. There were two more cameras that he had positioned down the hillside that w
ere watching their emergency exit too. The cameras were all battery-powered, but used very little power when on standby, and were equipped with night vision and motion detection.

  Their new toy was a drone that lived inside a tiny wooden shelter situated at the base of their hill. On top of the shelter was a small solar panel, which provided enough power to keep it charged at all times. The shelter was completely hidden and surrounded by dense blackthorn bushes that were severely painful to touch. Operated remotely from inside the house on their iMac or iPads, it gave full HD video live-streaming that allowed them to see everywhere whilst it flew for miles in all directions. The battery charge lasted for twenty minutes, and it could go up as high as two miles without the signal dropping.

  When Kaine had first brought it home, his wife had shook her head, amused. She’d asked him playfully, ‘Do we really need more cameras for extra security? Do you know something that I don’t?’

  Not long passed, however, before she began to really love it, since she could fly it around during the day and see things without worrying about being burnt by the sun. Together they had seen events in town, watched the finish line of the London to Brighton bike race, and regularly hovered over the Amex stadium. They could hardly remember what life had been like before they had gotten it--their much-loved ‘eyes in the sky’.

  For extra security Kaine had installed shiny steel tubes, which went through the earth from the outside, opening out into the traps rooms. In the middle of each tube were mirrors and magnifying glasses which would increase the sun’s powers, reflecting its powerful, deadly UV rays into the rooms. Kaine kept those blocked at all times, because even with two sets of vampire skin wraps on, the increased power of the UV light would kill them. If ever they were attacked by their own kind though, they could go down to the lower rooms and pull a lever, which locked the top exit automatically. All the light tubes would open, and any vampires inside would burn.

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  The local history of the area was rich in superstition and folklore, some of which suggested that the valley was in fact created by the devil himself.

  It was said that in the past Saint Cuthman of Steyning, who was an Anglo-Saxon church builder, had tricked the devil into leaving the local people of the weald, an area of marshes and forests, alone forever. The story was that the area, the last place to be converted to Christianity, had been the devil’s last stronghold. The loss had driven him mad, and he had decided that if the people would so easily turn their backs on him, then he would drown them under the waters of the sea forever. One night was all it would take for him to dig his way through the hills, letting in the waters and sending them all to a watery grave. He boasted as much to Saint Cuthman, who had no fear of the devil because of his strong faith in God.

  He immediately started to devise a plan to save the people of the weald. ‘What will you do,’ he asked the devil, ‘if you can’t dig your way through in one night?’ The devil’s reply was that he would leave Cuthman and the people alone forever.

  Through the night, the local people quaked in their beds, hearing the terrifying noise of the devil digging and stamping his hooves outside their homes. The earth he flung aside can still be seen today in the distance, in the forms of Cissbury Ring, Mount Caburn and Firle Beacon. The devil got tired as he dug, and seeing light begin to appear on the eastern hills and hearing a morning cockerel crowing, he foolishly believed that he had failed his task. The devil thought the night was over, and that he had not finished digging as he had boasted he would. He then fled out to sea, shamed with failure, and so caught up in his wretched feelings that he didn’t realize that the sky all around him was still dark. Nor that he had just past the laughing figures of Saint Cuthman and Sister Ursula who was holding a brightly-lit candle and she smoothing the ruffled feathers of a rooster who had helped to save the weald. The dyke remained untouched forevermore as a lasting symbol of good overcoming evil.

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  ‘What’s wrong?’ came a slightly muffled voice from Regina’s side of the bed. Kaine smiled and returned to her, lying down with his face close to hers.

  ‘Can’t you sleep, my darling?’ she asked. Kaine felt his wife’s hand slide up onto his chest, warm from its place under the sheets.

  He sighed, remembering the dream. ‘I am very concerned, darling.’ he told her. ‘I have seen much trouble ahead in a vision that I had last night. In it, I was in a meeting in Rex’s coven with Hoidrious his second in command. The planet was dying, and he had an evil plan to save it. This dream was no dream--I must act upon what I have seen,’ he said with urgency in his voice.

  Kaine loved her emphatically and to him she gave meaning to life. She was its whole being, its purpose, its color, and its clarity through vicious heinous times. Her vision was never clouded and she was always able to see the goodness in it, like mother Teresa.

  To imagine an eternal life without her, one where he would be trapped alone within the walls of vampirism, he felt it would be far worse than even an eternity in hell.

  He had assiduous beliefs towards his relationship lasting indefinitely with her and should another being ever try to come between them, then by bare hand, his rage would guide him as retribution for the heinous act would be sought. Blood would be spilt in rivers not gallons, even his best friend Laouse would succumb to an ignominious death, before he would allow her life to be taken from him.

  Hearing her husband’s worries about his vision, Regina sat up instantly. She knew him well as they had been together hundreds of years--way before the werewolf war had even started. She trusted everything her husband did, his thoughts, his reactions. She truly loved him and believed in her husband always. So very much, in fact, that if he was troubled by something, she immediately wanted to understand what it was. They were a team ‘till death do they part’, a phrase she took very seriously.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘was it like the vision of the war with those beasts?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, only even more clear than that. I fought against werewolves. Rex had fifty of them that he was breeding from, and he's going to release them across the world to kill millions of humans. In the vision there’s widespread famine, wars, sickness and huge winds with terrible rain. People are dying everywhere on the earth, and Rex’s coven and others blame humanity,’ he said.

  ‘That’s in the future?’ she asked, shocked.

  ‘I know, darling. It sounds bleak doesn't it? Rex plans to surprise-attack the Scottish coven by sending them ten humans as a gift who are infected as werewolves. They will turn into beasts inside their dungeons and kill all of them,’ he said in a deeply concerned voice.

  ‘Do you really think it was a vision though, without any mistake?’ Regina asked him. ‘You are really sure like before? Because if so, then I agree we must act upon it.’ She was silent for a moment, and Kaine could almost hear her thinking.

  She let out an exasperated breath. ‘What can we do though? How can we tell the Scots in the future that Rex plans to attack them? I thought we vampires could only travel back in time, not forward, unfortunately.’ Gazing into her husband’s eyes, Regina urged him, ‘Tell me everything you saw. What shall we do?’ she asked, looking extremely worried.

  Kaine leant across and pulled her up to him, stroking her soft red hair with his right hand before then sliding his strong muscular leg diagonally over both her legs underneath the sheets. ‘I love you very much, my darling, but you know that don’t you,’ he said in a soft, caring and passionate voice as he smiled down at her beneath him.

  Right before their lips met, Kaine pulled back, startled.

  ‘What is it?’ Regina asked.

  ‘Something else I saw. Rex ordered a warrior to time-travel back into our time. He ordered him to search for a woman called Jenny and to turn her into a vampire. She is a priest’s illegitimate daughter and lives in Brighton.’

  ‘Why would Rex order a warrior to travel back in time to turn her, I wonder?’ Regina
replied, wiping away tears that were forming in her eyes. ‘And why back to 2014 exactly? What’s so special about this year?’

  ‘Rex and his cohorts have found the sacred Silver Sword, and they want to blackmail the Church over her in the future so that they will lift the spell on it. In the vision, she didn’t live long past 2014, or so it seemed. So they had to come back to this year to get her.’ he said.