Outside Hell (24 page)

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.”

Laouse paused and then still not recognizing
the voice he said, “Yes but if you don’t mind, who are you?”

The feeble voice told him that he was a
priest by the name of John and that he was staying with Kaine and
Regina. John then asked being cautious not to reveal too much to a
complete stranger, who Laouse was. Laouse replied by saying he was
a friend of theirs. John feeling that it was safe to say what was
worrying him, then said that Kaine had stormed out of the house
with Regina looking for revenge against a vampire called Sorchek
who’d killed his parents hundreds of years before.

Laouse fully aware of the hunt for Kaine's
parents killer that had been fully exhausted over the years with no
results, then asked John if he’d any idea where they’d gone.

John told him that when Kaine had received a
phone call and the person on the phone had told Kaine about the
location of the killer, that Kaine had scribbled down notes but he
couldn’t read them himself.

John said that it was written in some archaic
language.

Laouse fully aware that John the priest was
not a vampire, because Kaine would have written the notes down in
their old vampire language, and that’s why he couldn’t read them,
told John that he was coming there himself to read the note.

Laouse said that it would take him about
eight hours in his chopper to fly there and then said goodbye and
abruptly hung up the phone.

Turning around to Claudius, they both looked
at each other for a second puzzled.

Laouse had a horrible gut feeling that
somehow the happenings of Paris, Satan and now Kaine steaming off
looking for revenge, plus there being a priest in his secret home
that no one knew about except a select few, that somehow it was all
connected.

Claudius who’d overheard that Kaine was
looking for revenge suddenly connected the dots with Paris too and
then stood up asking if he could accompany Laouse to Kaine and
Regina’s house too.

Laouse thought about it for a second, and
then owing to the gravity of the situation plus the fact that
Claudius was looking for his son, he’d agreed.

Laouse didn’t like the idea of revealing
Kaine’s address to anyone, but thought that as it was eight hours
flight away, that Claudius wouldn’t know exactly where it was
afterwards anyway. Laouse would fly through the clouds and mask the
directions there, keeping it a secret from the Bavarian monster
too.

*****

As Laouse navigated his way down through the
clouds using his instruments, finally the massive chopper touched
down from its flight to near Brighton from Austria. They’d refueled
once in Belgium quickly, and then continued on at full speed
passing over the British channel to Devil’s Dyke.

Stepping out of the chopper into the thick
wet grass with the huge rotors slowly coming to a stop above them,
Laouse quickly locked the bird up and then the two vampires ran
through the moonlight and deep mist for half a mile. As they’d
reached the old derelict cowshed where the secret entrance to Kaine
and Regina’s home was, Laouse quickly using his mobile phone then
called down to warn John that they were letting themselves in.

John thanked him for letting him know and
then Laouse hung up as he’d felt inside a hole in the bricks for
the secret latch.

After navigating through the deadly traps
room avoiding the old Alaskan bear traps that were eagerly awaiting
a misplaced foot, the two vampires went downstairs.

John met them in the kitchen and as he’d
cowered at the sight of Claudius who was twice broader than Hulk
Hogan in his prime and much taller, John who’d found his hands
shaking then passed across the piece of paper that Kaine had
written the address on.

Laouse forgetting his manners snatched the
piece of paper from him with extreme urgency and opened it up from
the folded state it was in.

Then he’d leant across the kitchen table to
read it, whilst Claudius was smiling down through his thick beard
at John, Laouse was suddenly fully aware where Kaine and Regina had
gone.

The note had said in Kaine’s handwriting,

Carpathian Mountains of Romania above the
village of Fagaras, there’s a small cabin on the western face, home
to vampire women working the local skiers for sex and blood.

Laouse paused as he’d thought of the area
that he knew well from skiing holidays and that it was fairly
local, bar a few hours flying, to his lab in Austria. He wasn’t
aware of the cabin at all but the note had said the peak of the
mountain and he’d never flown so high during the winter months due
to the terrible conditions up there.

Turning to Claudius who’d asked him if he
knew where Kaine and Regina had gone, Laouse looked up at the
Bavarian monster towering above him and nodded. Then turning to
John who was standing there in his black priestly gown holding a
bible, Laouse told him that he should leave Kaine and Regina’s home
immediately.

John looked up with fear tracing through his
soul, and then in his feeble voice asked the reason why it wasn’t
safe.

Unaware if Kaine and Regina being chased by
Satan had found itself to John’s ears yet, Laouse cautiously and
not wanting to reveal too much, simply replied saying that it was
unsafe for him to stay there with recent events that have
happened.

John had started to tell Laouse that he’d
been promised by Kaine and Regina that their home was safe, but
then paused mid sentence as he’d realized that maybe Laouse was
right that now Kaine and Regina wasn’t there, that it wasn’t safe
to stay there after all.

John then nervously said to Laouse that he
had nowhere he could go.

A moment passed and then Laouse asked him why
and John told him that he’d seen Raffious in a vision and how it
had shown him that he’d been using Kaine and Regina as part of a
sick plan for revenge against Rex from the white coven. Laouse
cursed when John told him about Raffious because he’d met Raffious
on numerous occasions too.

“So the old boy is really against vampires
and trying to kill us all is he.” Laouse replied.

Claudius who was keenly listening furrowed
his massive eyebrows at the mention of killing vampires, and then
as the eyebrows came down anger boomed its way through his whole
body and he’d snarled.

“Who’s this fucking Raffious guy?” the
Bavarian demanded to know as he walked up to John. In response to
the towering giant approaching, the priest who’d just got over
cowering moments before, suddenly held his bible out in front of
him and said, “I’m a servant of god, don’t hurt me.”

Claudius paused in his tracks and turned his
head to look at Laouse before both of them suddenly burst out
laughing.

A few seconds passed and then as the big man
wiped spittle from his beard, he looked down at the priest and
said, “Don’t worry little man, I won’t hurt you. I’m sorry I didn’t
mean to scare you.”

Laouse then said, “Right John, you have a
minute to get your things together because we are leaving.”

John nodded and then after snatching up his
bag with his wallet and a few other personal items plus his bible,
all three of them made their way back to the chopper.

When the chopper was approaching the base in
Hungary with their vampire cargo swinging underneath, the pilots
had finally been able to contact them on the radio. They’d said
with an uneasy edge in their German voices, that they weren’t happy
with the mechanics who’d serviced the bird the day before, because
the engine had failed and they’d nearly died.

Then when the control room had ignored the
comment and asked them if the mission was a success, and also if
the second chopper was with them, they’d told them that they’d both
got away with vampires, and that they hadn’t seen the other chopper
since minutes after taking off from the shack in Romania.

Then ignoring their questioning but reverting
back to their previous complaint, and with much sterner voices,
they’d reminded the control room that they were coming in heavy,
and that they didn’t even know if they’d make it there. They’d said
that apart from the engine, the electrics had failed a minute after
takeoff too. They’d then added that they’d had to reduce the engine
power to the bare minimum for the whole flight back, and were glued
to their dash hoping that something else didn’t fail, that would
result in them spiralling to their deaths in the icy fields
below.

The control room had got the point and then
asked them how far they were away from the base, because they’d
said that they couldn’t see them on the radar.

The pilots with their headsets on and their
mouthpieces across in front of their lips, had both looked across
at each other with deep shock etched into their faces.

OFF Radar, how the hell was that possible?
They’d both thought. “The night just gets weirder and weirder,” the
co pilot then replied with the soldiers in the back also feeling
tense.

They were actually only a couple of miles
away now and hadn’t thought that they’d even be able to make radio
contact before landing, because the whole journey their radio had
been dead. The copilot had been frantically pressing the speak
button trying to warn the base of their grave situation, but all
that was coming back through their headsets, was the most insanely
high pitched hissing sound.

To be fair though, they’d actually had a
couple minutes talking to the other chopper after their electrics
had malfunctioned, and then when they’d lost radio contact with it,
they’d tried all the other radio channels hoping that they could
get something, but every channel was either hissing or completely
dead.

When they’d first heard the hissing sound it
had been so loud that it had caught them off guard, and in response
to the searing pain in their ears, they’d both let go of the
controls and then ripped their headsets off. The heavy old German
chopper had instantly gone into a nose dive heading for a forest
hundreds of feet below them. Then as the pilots had scrambled to
regain control and only just saved them death, with the heavy
rotors screaming above them in the climb, the soldiers in the back
had words. They’d not heard the loud ear piercing sound and didn’t
care too, they’d just wanted to get back in one piece. Jamming
their guns into the backs of the pilots necks, and to pale
expressions, they’d warned them not to fuck around and to get them
back to the base.

The tension in the chopper was palpable and
none of them truly had any expectations that they’d ever feel the
hot showers in the base again, let alone experience the long life
that they’d been promised after being good boys and taking their
DD10 serum.

The noise that the pilots had heard through
their headsets had been immense. It was like standing with your
head inside a jet engine, and the captain of the hundred tonne
beast grinning out of his window at you whilst giving it full
roar.

*****

Finally though as the injured bird of steel
had cleared the last set of snow covered pine trees, and then made
its final descent down into the square mile of icy tarmac outside
their base, they’d all felt deeply relieved. Then once they’d
hovered for a few minutes and the cargo underneath was unhooked,
and the soldiers had leapt out the side doors, they’d flown over
the armored vehicles and the King tiger tanks, before landing next
to the other choppers by the main entrance.

Then after reaching up and flicking off
several switches and applying the compression brake to slow the
rotors down to a soft purr, the pilots had opened their cockpit
hatches and got out. Only as their feet had touched the ground both
of them ran away from it, just incase the thing was going to
blow.

If there was ever a flight in their history
that might have been so harsh that it could have grounded them
instantly, and then also made them hand over their chopper
licences, never trusting another chopper again, that was it.
Normally one thing in the bird warns them of failure, but never
everything at the same time like they’d just experienced, with
smoke belching up from the dash too.