The Dark Messenger

by Milo Spires

  ‘Raffious had an arrangement with Longinus but he never intended upon keeping it, instead he always knew in his deranged mind that the not so smart vampire, would then, when he had fulfilled his role, simply succumb brutally to his wrath—he was going to kill him.’

  Whilst all this was going on, Raffious was also ruining the planet so that it completely matched with the story that Rex had been told. He started wars, damaged factories causing vast pollution everywhere. He broke into labs and released their deadly diseases from frozen states. He travelled around the world intent on destroying it, and over many years achieved just that. Soon there were thick dark clouds pluming everywhere. Radiation was in the skies, sickness worldwide, high winds and destruction on a global scale. All this and the deaths to millions of humans, manipulated by Raffious, or as we in Heaven refer to him as, The Dark Messenger.’

  ‘After his long plan worked and he caught Rex, he ignored saving the planet and continued to harass Longinus into getting the last piece of the vase. Only sadly for him, even without Rex, the coven were still very much guarding their fallen leaders chambers, and entry inside was still impossible. Raffious had no choice but to wait and give Longinus more time. Every day Raffious waited, he was furious hanging on.’

  ‘The planet will, if its not saved in fact die and then with it every living thing will die too. Raffious may try to fix it after making the vampires extinct, but that is doubtable, and anyway by then it will be too late. It is actually believed he will jump into another world somewhere, a parallel dimension and seek refuge. He knows we are hunting him, and that it will only be a matter of time until we catch him. He doesn’t care though, he just demands retribution for Adina’s death and nothing more.’

  Regina then said ‘So Installis or Raffious as we know him has done all of this because of revenge? I cant believe it?’ she said, with immense rage building within.

  ‘How dare he do what he's doing? Ruining innocent people’s lives, destroying the planet and medalling with the future. He wants revenge for his woman but what about all the people he is killing to get it.’ she added.

  Becky then interrupted, ‘I have a question? How if you couldn’t find Installis or Raffious when you were ordered to take him back to heaven, do you know all of this anyway?’

  ‘My darling, it is true I could not find him, the information I told you came to me when Jonivac was found to be helping Installis, it was then that we learnt the other parts, and by pieces things together, I was able to make up the whole story.’

  ‘So Kaine you are needed to stop Installis, he has truly lost his ways and our heavenly father demands he is caught and taken there to pay for his crimes. Installis is a very evil, disturbed man. Now as I said when I arrived, I have come here with an offer for you.’

  ‘It was decided some time ago and I have been watching you too, how you deal with situations, your loving heart, the care and compassion you have for all things living, your kind ways and immense generosity. It would be a pleasure if you accepted what I as a messenger from Heaven am about to offer you, I and our Heavenly father, truly believe you are perfect for the role.’

  ‘Heaven has offered you to be become my next truth messenger’

  Kaine looked absolutely shocked as did everyone in the room, he turned to the angel and said ‘but you must have made a mistake, I am a vampire and I have killed in my life, not that I wanted too that is, but the situations where I did, there were no other alternatives.’

  ‘Heaven makes few mistakes Kaine, everything you have done in your life we know about. It was not your fault that you were transformed into a vampire, it did not have any affect on whether you were suitable or not for this position?’ he said as he then walked forwards and placed his hands upon Kaine’s forehead.’

  ‘Please have a day to fully consider this offer, it is a great position that you will thoroughly enjoy, only it would come at a high price to test your sincerity should you consider accepting.’ Kaine and his wife both looked at each other thinking the same thing, ‘a high price?’

  ‘Yes unfortunately if you accept, you and your friends here will wake up in another time as humans, living a normal life, never remembering this life nor that you ever existed and your dogs will be with them too. You will then join us and your memories of Regina, your friends and the dogs will be permanently erased, you will be my new truth messenger, starting with a completely clean mind.’

  ‘If I don't accept.’ Kaine said trying to pick up his voice to make it sound quite authoritative but he couldn’t, his words came out softly and it shocked him.

  ‘I know it will be an extremely difficult decision for you all to make this evening but please bare in mind, your first role will be to track down Installis and bring him to me, I will then take him to Heaven to answer for his actions. Afterwards, you must find the two pieces of the vase and bring them back to Heaven so that they can finally be destroyed.’

  ‘If Installis is NOT stopped, as I have previously said, he will take the Trucale vase and jump back into the past. When there he will pour the holy waters into the first vampires drinking water and all vampires will cease to exist.’

  Everyone looked absolutely shocked and Kaine then said, ‘Basically what you are saying is that if I reject the position to be with my wife, we will cease to exist anyway. So I have no choice really. There must be another way. If you were to drop me in the future I will happily kill Installis, then get the pieces of the vase and everyone wins.’

  The angel slowly shook his head from side to side as he said, ‘Sorry it is not as easy as that, Installis is very powerful now, and your fighting skills would be useless against his black magic, he would most certainly kill you as a vampire. As my truth messenger though, his powers would be useless against you.’

  Regina then had something she wanted to add, ‘Regarding us, having time to consider your offer? We don't think we have longer than a few hours maximum before Rex’s warriors below us, break through. We need more time to deliberate over it, else we cannot decide either way.’

  Kaine was shocked hearing his wife say what she had just said, and for a moment truly believed she wanted to think about it. Was his wife seriously considering accepting the offer? Would she be happy to never see him again, just to save her own life? Then he reminded himself that she truly loved him with all her heart, and that she was obviously just keeping their options open. At least until they could be alone to discuss it properly that is.’

  Regina smiled and winked at him as she read his mind. The angel smiled at them both too.

  ‘I can sense that you both love each other so very much and I am truly sorry that I cannot offer you another alternative, my hands are tied. Installis must be stopped from affecting the future, it is for mankind to control its own destiny and not for one man to guide it the way he wants it to go.’

  ‘Suddenly the digging noise from beneath them became oppressively loud. It was so loud that it even sounded like it was starting to come up through the walls.’

  The Angel held his left hand up and closed his eyes. A moment passed and he muttered a few words. Suddenly like a machine had been running and someone had flicked the switch, the noise beneath them and the vibrations ceased instantly. The vampires below, froze in their spot, and outside the humans, cars, planes, even the birds in the sky did too.

  ‘Time is frozen for you now so that you can make your decision between yourselves. You have a day until everything is reset and time starts again. When this happens they will resume their attack beneath you. There are no exits available as they are locked. If you do decide not to accept our offer before the day is fully passed, Heaven will know and time will re-start immediately.’

  ‘I must leave now, please remember though that should you not accept, it does not mean Heaven is leaving you here to a certain death, Think, but think wisely.’ he said. Then the angel said good bye and vanished!

  Chapter 30 – Risk insanity or let him live?

  Back in the cells – One
hundred and fifty three floors below The Tower of London.

  After the jailers had left, and Longinus had heard them beginning to make their way back up the stairwell, to add insult to injury he had also heard them rip off their masks and apart from spitting they also begin to gasp violently.

  Damn he thought as he realized that even though they had their masks on, they could still smell the putrid stench that he was now tasting as it crawled past his vomit covered fingers and then climbed up into his mouth.

  He gazed over at Raffious. He was lying, still paralysed, where he had collapsed when they had thrown him into the cell. He was face down and his lips were flat against the filthy floor. His long beard was splayed out in all directions, and he still had that ominous green arrow shaft sticking out from his knee.

  Longinus laughed at his now helpless, fallen comrade-in-arms, who up until half an hour ago had been quite the opposite. A man with unbelievable powers who seemed to be able to do anything he chose, like create bars around Rex or time travel in any direction. Now though, because of that arrow he could see emanating strange gases in the old fools leg, he was powerless and reduced to a pathetic mess who couldn’t even stand.

  Crouching by his head, Longinus could hear him uttering, gentle, piteous, almost childlike moans.

  ‘You see what being an evil bastard got you?’ he said as he gently prodded him with his index finger, just to be sure he was really paralysed, and that it wasn’t all just some tortuous and elaborate hoax.

  Still the unintelligible and grossly indecipherable moans came.

  Standing back up and leaving him in that posture with his drooling mouth building puddles on the dark, blood stained floor, Longinus turned around to take in the grim details of his deeply forlorn cell. With nothing else to do, he considered his unpropitious chances of escape.

  The cell was seven feet wide and about 12 feet in length. At the back there was a bench that took up the whole 12 feet, which was bolted to the wall by some strange rust covered archaic fixings, that he had never seen before. The three walls that made up the back and sides were simply nothing but solid rock, which apart from also being covered in blood, had splattered remains of predecessors who had succumbed to some heinous punishment before.

  Walking over to a lump of something that was looking somewhat ominous on the floor. As he slowly bent down to examine it, the gravity of what it was, as it dawned on him that it was part of an eyebrow, made his insides curl. Bending down further to see if there were any clues as to how it had become detached from the head, he realized under the congealed blood, there was even a slither of rotting bone.

  He flicked it away, shuddering. Resisting the urge to vomit was easier now, since his insides were empty, but the urge was there nonetheless. A welcome distraction came when he saw where the grisly thing had landed. It had bounced off the wall, rolled over, and gotten stuck in Raffious’ hair.

  ‘What just hit me, Longinus?’ Raffious mumbled.

  Longinus had been startled to see the eyebrow, but now to hear Raffious talking again, had shocked him even more. After the arrow had hit him, apart from a few failed spells he’d tried to summon, he hadn’t said a word. Longinus also partly wished he never spoke again, owing to the ominous threats from his jailers who had said, that when he gets his voice back, if he refused to tell them where Rex was, they would amputate limbs and not just the old boys too.

  Longinus wasn’t a gambling man but he highly doubted Rex would give up his number one card so easily, for fear of execution immediately afterwards. No he envisaged the deal or trade off between Hoidrious and Raffious over Rex would take some time to thrash out. If Raffious had a high threshold for pain, that is.

  ‘I don’t know, I wasn’t watching,’ Longinus replied, pretending he hadn’t just seen what hit the fool. His own words were garbled, since his hand was still clamped across his mouth, desperately trying to keep out the putrid stench that filled the air.

  ‘And get me up from the floor, because otherwise I will…’ Raffious started.

  Longinus suddenly felt a sense of temporary power over him and interrupted, mumbling through his closed fingers, ‘Or you will do what? Your days of bullying me are over.’ He laughed shortly. ‘I’m not helping you. Lie there and rot for all I care.’

  Turning around, he walked over to the array of bars that made up the front of the cell, and began to peer through them. First he looked back up the passageway towards the way they had come in.

  ‘If you don’t come over here and help me get up, then when my spells, finally overcome the powers from that thing in my leg, I will leap away and leave you here.’ Raffious said, sputtering his words as his lips kept catching the filthy floor.

  Longinus turned away from the bars with a sigh. Since he couldn’t see anything anyway, he walked over to Raffious, but not out of reluctantly accepting him without protest. Instead when he reached him, he hovered his boot directly above the back of his head.

  ‘I believe you would do just that, after all the things I have done for you,’ Longinus said through gritted teeth. His voice rose as he went on. ‘What a bastard you are. I might just stamp on your head now, and watch your brains spill out all over the floor. That will fuck up your leaving plans, for sure!’ he shouted.

  Raffious started laughing, causing bubbles to form in the drool around his mouth.

  ‘You find that funny, do you? I think it’s funnier that you, the mighty powerful wizard or whatever you think you are, are now lying helpless under my boot.’

  Raffious stopped laughing, and said, ‘If you do, then you are sure to suffer even more. There is no guarantee that anyone will come back for weeks. Not only will the hunger pangs for blood cripple you, but without someone to talk to you will experience insanity much sooner than you might expect.’

  Longinus realized that the old fool had a point. Regardless of how much he hated him, to be trapped on his own was really not a welcoming thought. Raffious was probably right; after the initial joyous feeling of smashing his brains in for all the evil he had done to him, reality would come knocking. Days filled with nothing—no music, no gorgeous women to arouse his sexual feelings…just that annoying dripping noise he could hear coming from the next cell. Then after twisting and turning a millennia of times without a blanket as he tried to sleep, his mind would begin to develop strange thoughts. Granted, the executioner jailers with their sinister masks had said it all happened in a different order to that, but how would they know? Had they tried it first-hand as he was about to do?

  Suddenly with that thought, all his temporary power vanished and again he was the old Longinus, the one who was in Raffious’ shadow and utterly scared of what he could or might do to him. Even though Longinus hated the feeling, for now he accepted its grisly return.

  Removing his boot from the killer position, he bent over and, so as not to touch the floor with his already-filthy hands, took hold of Raffious’ dirt-encrusted robes and hoisted him up. Then, holding his breath, he carried him over and set him down tentatively on the bench, before clamping his hands back around his nose and mouth, and again inhaling, more unwanted stench.

  ‘Thanks,’ Raffious muttered, his lips covered in both vile dirt and hair. Some of the hair was white, and his own, but some of it looked to be a similar shade of brown to that of the eyebrow that now lay looking at them from its last resting place on the floor.

  The brown hair around his mouth was definitely not his.

  Leaning forwards and trying to mentally block out what he was about to do, Longinus closed his eyes and quickly wiped away the filth from the old boy’s mouth.

  ‘Thanks again,’ Raffious said in a much clearer tone. ‘Now get those fucking puke-covered hands away from me.’

  Longinus looked at him in disbelief and muttered, ‘…that’s fucking gratitude, don’t you dare even think about leaving me here after this.’

  Raffious as expected didn’t even reply.

  Longinus tutted and said Wanker in reply to his ig
norance and he turned around and took a seat next to him.

  The smell in the cell was becoming just too overpowering, and with it, Longinus was feeling anxious beyond belief. He would give anything at this moment just to be able to breath in one mouthful of clean air. His thoughts wandered back to the air quality and the beautiful valley outside Kaine’s home in Devil’s Dyke. The memory nearly made him cry.