by Milo Spires
***
Suddenly his mind is disturbed from thought, as biting cold wind races through the gaps in the rocks behind him. It sends a chill straight through him as the fire also protests. The flames roar up aggressively, violently, as if in deep protest at the unwanted intruder.
Shivering deeply, he leans toward the fire and gently places another log into the flames. As the damp wood lands in the furnace, bright orange sparks burst up high into the sky. The fire crackles and pops, spitting vehemently in disgust.
As he holds his hands up in front of the heat to warm them, he gradually begins to drift back into the dream state that he had been in moments before. He remembers the first time one of his children had opened its eyes, after reading out the spell that had created it.
***
He had been shocked at first, because it never moved--not a stir, absolutely nothing--until a few minutes had passed. He had thought the experiment a failure until he saw the chest of the creature rise and fall with even breathing. More time passed and still it had lain motionless on the rocky ground, with only the breathing and nothing more.
He had then knelt beside it, slowly lowering his hand down and letting his fingers glide across its shimmering grey fur. As he had looked down at its face, the eyes had opened suddenly and the beast roared. Startled, he had tried to run, but had slipped and fallen onto his side. Without trying to stand again, he had edged himself backwards across the floor. As he did, his eyes had locked onto those of his creature. He couldn’t look away as its lips raised dust in front of its nostrils, then gently blew it across the floor.
The creature had been the first to move, pulling itself up onto its huge feet with a sigh as it found its balance for the first time. It then walked slowly towards him. He had frantically tried to remember the spell to stop it, but somehow his mind had gone blank.
He suddenly felt something, a pressure. Looking down with terror, he saw the beast’s razor-sharp claws gently resting on his thigh.
Then it started to lick him with its rock-hard tongue before it laid down peacefully next to him on the floor. He had smiled to himself knowing that his first ever child had been born.
***
Suddenly he is disturbed from his happy memories and awakened from his deep thought by a scream outside, somewhere below on the valley floor. Standing up quickly, he steps over the fire, and runs outside the shelter to look. He is panicking, because the sound he heard was the same one he sadly remembers from another child that he had lost many years before.
Again she screams, and this time as he looks down in to the bushes below, he can see her glowing red eyes.
‘I’m coming!’ he screams as he runs down the slope, heading for her.
Reaching the bushes where she lies, he is horrified at what he sees. His child’s face is badly slashed and she has a horribly broken jaw. Her body is shaking violently from deep gashes, and he knows there is absolutely nothing he can do. Her hind legs are badly severed and blood is pumping from her stomach all across the rocky floor.
Suddenly she screams, blood dripping out her nose and mouth, her back arched and her tongue thrust out. She tries to crawl, he tries to help, but she suddenly drops flat to the ground. Then, with much regret he drives his dagger into her brain. The hardened steel thrusts clean. Her pain released, she lies dead upon the ground.
No more of his werewolves manage to reach home that night, and inside he knows that the vampires had won tonight’s battle. Bitterness mixed with anger sweeps through his veins, as he tries to think of another way he can get his revenge.
Chapter 11 – The Visitor
Back in the hospital ward, Jenny was struggling to breath whilst Becky who had just winded one of the skinheads with a vicious kick to the gut, was about to be shot by his mate.
Then suddenly Jenny caught a glimpse of something fast approaching them through the gap in the wards doors. It was something massive, and moving with extreme speed.
BOOM!
Suddenly the double doors exploded inwards with such force, they ripped themselves off their hinges and then crashed to the floor.
Standing there in the doorway was Kaine.
One of the remaining attackers swung his gun so that it was pointing directly at him. ‘Freeze!’ he shouted.
Kaine stood there grinning back at him.
‘They are silver bullets, and you’re dead!’ the skinhead yelled. He pulled the trigger in rapid succession.
Nine bullets flew directly through the air at Kaine. Knowing what was coming, he blocked his face with his arm and held it there until the gun was empty.
‘You fools!’ he shouted, lowering his arm again. ‘Don’t you know anything? If you think silver bullets kill all vampires, you’re very much mistaken,’ he snarled. He then arched his head backwards to reveal his fangs and roared. Becky’s roar had been frightening enough earlier, but his was deafening, spine-chilling—one that gave no doubt that someone was going to be in deep trouble.
Kaine’s hearing suddenly picked up a noise, which sounded like someone was moving about on the roof. He gave no indication that he had been distracted though, and glared at his quarry.
The three men froze, then the one who had fired at him suddenly looked down and saw that he had wet himself. Kaine started laughing.
Embarrassed, the shooter then turned and ran towards the fire door. He landed a massive boot on it and the door burst open. He was halfway inside the stairwell when Becky knocked him out by slamming him into the opposite wall. Now standing over him she could see his jugular vein pulsing in his neck beneath her; she wanted her first feed and it was calling to her.
‘Leave him!’ Kaine screamed, but she ignored him and went in for the kill.
Kaine knew he couldn’t allow it. He also knew that it was unlikely that she had ever fed on human blood before, and he wasn’t about to let her start now. With lightning speed, he flung his Ghurka knife right at the man, hitting him in the back of the head. It buried itself in so deep that the blade came out the other side.
Becky was furious. She had desperately wanted to kill him by draining his blood, and now he was useless to her as a corpse. Even as newly-turned as she was, she knew that she needed to drain the blood and have her victim die from her bite, not drink the blood from a dead man.
Turning around, she snarled back at him.
‘STOP!’ he shouted at her, but she didn’t listen. Instead, she decided that he would pay for depriving her of the first kill with his own blood instead.
Screaming, she flew out of the doorway at him and then leapt high in the air with her razor sharp finger nails ready for the kill.
Kaine stepped forwards, reining in his power so as to keep from hurting her too severely. As she fell on him, he threw a fist at her face. Was it too much though, or maybe too little? he wondered, as his fist connected with her forehead.
As the punch landed though, her body still came forwards underneath her, causing her head to be thrust backwards. She crashed down onto her back beneath him.
The two men left standing in the room were speechless, unable to move in their terror.
Kaine looked down at Becky, fervently hoping that she was out cold. Unfortunately, she wasn’t--she launched back up, hissing at him. Kaine didn’t wait a second though. With the back of his hand he slapped her hard across her face. As it connected, her face distorted, her neck went back and to the side, and her body followed suit. She twisted violently and crashed hard onto her side.
‘BEHAVE!’ he shouted at her. He reached over and grabbed her wrist, sliding her across to his side, where she lay motionless but still breathing.
Turning back to the men he said to them, ‘You disgust me. You are here working for a sick government department, trying to catch a vampire for experimentation, and you would happily kill this human woman too. I am a vampire, but I would never hurt a human unless I had to, and most certainly would never hurt a lady. Don’t you fools have any morals?’
‘Sorry, man,�
�� one of them said as he began to shake. His mate also apologized.
Kaine shook his head in disbelief, and then turned to address Jenny who was laying on the floor still struggling to breathe.
‘Are you Jenny, my darling?’ he asked, gentling his facial expression and his voice so as to keep from scaring her further.
Jenny was petrified, and simply nodded.
Kaine looked down at her throat and could see the blood in her veins was pulsing abnormally.
Keeping a tight hold on Becky, Kaine put out his other hand to her. Jenny tried to crawl away from him.
‘I won’t hurt you, I promise,’ he said to her. She looked up haltingly, and then her eyes connected with his. As they did, something inside of her truly believed him.
Forcing his knee down on Becky to hold her there, he reached forward with both hands and gently placed them on either side of Jenny’s neck. She didn’t resist this time, and as they touched her skin the effect was instant. His hands were freezing cold and the pain began to calm a little, but the effect on her brain was completely different. As the pain subsided, she grew dizzy. Then she suddenly passed out.
Becky’s eyes suddenly snapped open, and she squirmed under Kaine’s knee hold. ‘Fucker, I’m gonna KILL YOU!’ she screamed.
Kaine turned around and then brought his forehead down exceptionally hard into her face. It was a perfect hit and she bounced off the floor once, and then stopped moving. Nice hit, he thought.
Suddenly, he could hear the sound of huge helicopter rotor blades overhead. As it began to hover, he thought he could make out the sound of maybe two helicopters. Yes, behind the huge vibration coming from the first, he could hear a second one too. Then as the sound grew louder, the wires in the ceiling began to shake and dust fell down from everywhere.
‘Darling, hurry up!’ Regina messaged from her hiding place out in the cemetery. There are two helicopters above you, and from one of them there are men with machine guns sliding down ropes.’
‘Shoot those damn things, would you?’ he replied.
-------------------------
Using the ‘CheyTac’ sniper rifle armed with .50 caliber bullets, Regina tried to hit one of the two helicopters from her hiding place between the gravestones in Brighton’s main cemetery. She fired four rounds that completely missed. Looking up and away from the gun’s night vision sight, she cursed at herself.
‘Damn! Concentrate, will you woman?’ she chided herself. Her heart was pounding violently, and she knew that she was too nervous and needed to calm herself down. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t hit anything. Her husband’s life deeply depended on her accuracy.
Kaine had taught her well though. He had put her in situations where she had missed shot after shot, and then had gotten her extremely angry with herself by laughing and saying that she couldn’t do it. Just as she had been about to snap, he’d smile at her and say, ‘Right now you are pissed. Relax, breath, slow down, and see your shot.’ When she had, surprisingly on the out breath when she fired, she had hit every target perfectly.
Knowing that time was of the essence, she took in another deep breath and then leant forward, remembering what she had done before. She positioned herself in front of the gun’s sights again. This time she breathed, then she allowed for the moving target, calculated the distance, considered the wind, and on the out breath, she fired.
The rifle kicked back into her shoulder as the .50 caliber bullet instantly covered the thousand yards between herself and the hospital. It was a perfect hit too; there was a massive clanging noise and the tail rotor flew off. The helicopter completely out of control, then spun round and round, before it nose-dived and crashed hard into rooftop. As it hit, suddenly it burst into flames and then flipped on its side. Some of the men in the back were screaming as they leapt out of the wreckage covered in flames. They made about 5 paces before they fell over as the intense heat engulfed them.
Then she slid out the gun’s empty magazine from underneath the rifle and jammed in a new one, a full magazine with five shots. She was happy with herself and knew her husband would be proud of her as well. Leaning back down again, she started sighting in the second helicopter, which was facing her. She froze though for a second, as she was sure she could see the pilot looking directly at her. She swore she could see his face, but she pulled the trigger anyway.
She put all five shots straight into the helicopter’s main screen, two to the left side and three to the right. Dropping to the ground behind the wall, she pulled the rifle down with her, just in case she had missed and they started looking for where the shooter was.
The pilot had been hit directly in the face with the .50 caliber bullet. His head exploded as the bullet then passed through the seat behind him, smashing into and killing another person in the back. The co-pilot didn’t have time to react before he too was hit, as another bullet then smashed through his part of the screen and tore him in half. The helicopter spun round and round several times like the last one. It tipped forwards, then raced downwards, narrowly missing the roof top, and exploded in the car park below, right where her husband’s motorbike had been. She didn’t see it get hit exactly, but knew from the size of the explosion that she had some serious apologizing to do when she got home. Looking back one more time, she hoped that no one innocent had gotten hurt when the chopper crashed. The flames were growing in size, and hugged the contours of the hospital building. They spread seemingly everywhere at once, raging up into a massive inferno.
Back inside the hospital ward, Kaine had told the two men that if he ever saw them chasing his kind again, he would make their deaths as slow and as painful as he could imagine. Then, with Becky now sadly awake again and firmly gripped in his left hand and the limp Jenny now in his right, he launched himself out of the main ward window, beating his wings up into the night sky as he headed for home.
Longinus had been watching from the rooftop and had seen the whole thing, but due to Kaine’s size, he had preferred not to challenge him. Instead, he chose to watch the drama unfold through the clear pane in the window behind Becky’s bed. After the two helicopters had crashed, he then followed Kaine, making sure to keep well back in case he turned around to check behind him.
As he flew, though, Longinus started to think about who he knew in his coven who might be strong enough to fight this beast of a vampire in front of him. Suddenly he thought of their leader, Vius.
Now that would be a good matchup, he thought. Then, considering what he had just seen Kaine do in the hospital, he wondered if Vius would even be able to beat him. The doors of the ward exploding like they had, the accuracy of his knife throwing, the fact that bullets couldn’t hurt him…No, he thought, maybe even Vius would lose against him.
At 6ft 6, Vius was the equal of Kaine in size, and was a skilled swordsman. His only weakness was the lack of one eye, carved from his face with a dagger by Rex as a reward for saving his life.
Vius may or may not be a possibility, he thought with a smile. Still, if the battle ever happens between them, I hope I get to watch.
Chapter 12 -Bewl Waters
Rex looked out upon his subjects as they milled about him. The meeting was about to come to conclusion for the night. All in all, he’d been pleased with the results. He saw the way they had all looked at him, and he was sure that they were all envious.
I certainly cut an impressive figure, if I must say myself, he thought as he stroked the soft surface of his robe.
Rex wore his normal costume tonight, which was made of purple velvet. It was similar to a monk’s outfit, with a hood that came down past his face. The robe was full-length, ending so that it covered his feet. He had a thick red rope fastened around his waist, which had tassels on either end. The long sleeves covered his hands, but did nothing to hide the horrible four-inch long dark purple nails that grew from his fingertips.
Just as the coven was ready to leave the Tower of London, and the main doors on the other side of the river were about to be opened, a
messenger came flying down through the tunnels, beating his wings to pieces against the hard rock walls. The message he had was urgent, and he thought that it would please his master if he delivered it immediately.
