Night Kings: The Complete Anthology

Night Kings

The Complete Anthology

By Gregory Blackman

Published by Gregory Blackman at
Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Gregory Blackman

All right reserved.

No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form without the prior
written permission from the author.

This book is a work of fiction. The names,
characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s
imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely
coincidental.

Written in Canada.

Gregory Blackman’s Collection

*Released or Coming Soon*

The Reaper Series:

Duster and a Gun

Reaper’s Dogma

Short Story Anthologies:

Night Kings

Moon Gods

The Kingdoms of Ash Series:

The Unseen

Blood Ties

Tip the Scales

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Night Kings:

Humans own the day and yet it’s the
supernatural that lay claim to the night. Vampires, the oldest of
night’s children, have at last found a home in Salem and it’s a
home they’re unwilling to part from. Their mortal enemies, the
werewolves, lurk not just in the vast forests that surround the
city, but inside the very fabric of the community. Salem has always
been able to weather the storm that brew between both factions, but
they’re about to learn that they aren’t the only creatures that go
bump in the night.

Please Note: Night Kings is a YA collection
of eight episodic short stories based in the city of Salem.

Warning: This eBook contains graphic imagery
and coarse language.

Table of
Contents

Night Kings: The Complete Anthology

Gregory Blackman

Act One

The Lady in Red – The Raven Watches

Act Two

Sunkeeper – Dayside

Act Three

Sisters of Salem – The Red River

Act Four

Darkest of Depths – Old World Cull

Excerpt

Reaper

Act One

The Lady in Red – The
Raven Watches

Chapter
One

Night Kings: The Lady in Red

Gregory Blackman

No One Weeps for the Reaper

The woods of Salem, Massachusetts, have never
been known as a safe place to traverse. Many tales have been spun
by the townsfolk over the years of monsters seen in the shadows. No
one ever saw the demons that surrounded these stories, but the same
shiver went down each and every one of their collective spines to
let them know there was more to these tales than some bard’s
grandiose imagination.

Legends told of monsters that would linger in
wait for a tasty morsel to wander into the forests alone. Those
were the dark ones and they would descend upon their unknowing
prey, drain them of their blood, and spew out their bones for their
next victim to stumble upon. Yet, little did the humans know how
close their legends came to reality.

Dark secrets have been a part of Salem since
the days the city was founded. That was a time of persecution and
ignorance, a time not unlike the one today, but one with fewer
options for those of a sinister nature. For even a monster desires
land it can call home. Salem was such a place and it attracted
monsters far and wide, the monsters that wished to hide in plain
sight, and the ones to be feared most of all.

What started as a small settlement on the
fringes of society became a towering city that saw its interests
vested in all cities nearby. It was from this dark alliance the
city came to command such dominance in the region. Yet, it was an
alliance still unknown by the humans that thought they owned the
city. Elsa Dukane was one such citizen of Salem, all too human, and
unaware of the ethereal gauntlet clasped just beyond her
throat.

With a soft, ashen complexion and hair as
black as a raven’s feather, one
could
say she was an
attractive young woman. Not that she, or anyone else could tell
past the thick layer of mud and grime that would often accompany
her. She had an adventurous spirit, one that might prove deadly in
a town such as this. As a recent high school graduate, Elsa was
forced to take a year off from university when her mother passed
and her overzealous father forbade Elsa to leave the state with all
her friends. That suited her well enough. They weren’t all that
close anyway.

Everyone in Salem was normal and that just
wouldn’t do. It was as if there was a conscious effort by the
townsfolk to cast aside any interesting facets of their lives and
live an existence both stoic and introverted. There was work. There
was home. And there were few things in between.

It was a brisk autumn afternoon and Elsa
found herself in the outskirts of Salem in search of something she
couldn’t have prepared to find. Yet she wasn’t alone. Her childhood
friend, Lukas Wendish, was with her on this search. It had even
been at his insistence the two of them were in these woods in the
first place.

They weren’t the typical pair. She was fiery
and outspoken with a penchant for using her hands for talking.
Lukas, on the other hand, was a lanky and sheepish young man with
golden blonde hair and slight pause to his step. The two of them
had been side by side since they were toddlers. Her father was the
venerable mayor of Salem, and his, a close ally and councilor,
meant that often the two of them would spend many nights in
seclusion. That left the two of them a world of adventure outside
their doorstep, a world that would soon reveal itself in the most
gruesome of ways.

The forests surrounding Salem weren’t known
to be kind to strangers, but there were no strangers in these woods
today. They’d been raised every bit as much in these woods as they
had in their homes.

“We’ve been out here for hours now,” a
parched Elsa said. “It’s time you spill on what we’re doing out
here.”

“A tip,” he replied.

“A tip?” Elsa balked in disbelief. “We’re in
the middle of nowhere because of a tip? There any hunches you want
to spend the next half dozen hours on next?”

Lukas lifted himself up a small bank and held
out an arm for Elsa to ascend. It was a boney hand and not one easy
to grasp onto, but she did as he asked and was lifted up with what
appeared considerable ease for one with so little meat on his
bones.

“Are you complaining?” Lukas asked with a
crook in his smile. “I’ve never known you to be critical of
anything.”

“Well,” she said whimsically, “of course I’m
not complaining. Just would be nice to know what’s going on.”

“That would make two of us,” Lukas said.
After he helped me to my feet, Lukas turned back to scan the grove
that stood before us. “Something transpired in these woods last
night; something that needs to be uncovered.”

“How do you know this?”

“I just do.”

“Did your father tell you?”

“No. Stop with the questions, El.”

“Your father probably told you,” Elsa
reasoned to herself. “My dad doesn’t share any of his work with
me.”

“It wasn’t him,” Lukas said. “Let it go.”

Elsa grumbled a few choice words into her
long coat and moved to keep pace with her expeditious young friend.
The sun was on a slow descent into the landscape and soon nightfall
would be upon them. Then the woods would be no place for the two of
them.

They continued on for some time, without a
direction in mind, or any sense of where they needed to be. They’d
passed these same trees and brooks many times, but today was of a
different nature. Elsa could see that in Lukas’ eyes, the way he
spoke to her, and even the way he moved from step to step.

“We still headed to the festival tomorrow?”
Elsa asked.

“What festival?” a determined Lukas asked in
return. He continued to search the tree line for any signs of
disturbance, oblivious to the world around, a world that included
present company.

“The festival of the moon,” she stammered.
“You know the one. That festival you called pretentious.”

“Oh,” said Lukas, “well, the thing is I
haven’t a thing to wear.”

“Bullshit,” replied Elsa, refusing to hear a
word of it. “Gemma’s been down since her mother left and you’re
entertaining the ladies whether you want to or not. You got
that?”

Lukas gave her no response and instead
lingered his eyes on one object of no discernable interest.

“You got that?” she asked once more.

“Lukas?”

“Lukas?”

“Damn it,” she said, “you’re doing it
again.”

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but
finally she, too, saw what’d captured Lukas’ interest. There was a
single red mark, no larger than a handprint, pressed into one of
the many trees on the edges of the secluded alcove. The closer they
moved to the red mark, the more Lukas was awash in the trepidation
of what was to come.

Elsa was quick to take command of the
situation and she moved them back to an acceptable pace on approach
to the red mark. A foul stench filled the area as they closed
nearer. It was an odor unknown to the adventurous, yet closeted
Elsa Dukane. Not quite so for the friend next to her now quivering
with fear.

“Is that what I think it is?” Elsa asked. She
stopped dead in her tracks and stared blankly at the remnants of a
man torn to shreds.

“No,” said Lukas softly. “It’s worse.”

For this was the body of no average man. A
myriad of pistols, swords, and other collectibles were scattered
along the blood smeared next to his carcass. This wasn’t any normal
man and Lukas knew it right away.

“It’s not possible,” said a morose Lukas
Wendish. “It’s just not possible…”

Chapter Two

Night Kings: The Lady in Red

Gregory Blackman

Peacekeepers

Far from the woods of Salem stood another
forest of an equally sinister nature. This was one made of stone
and cement, one where the predators walked on two legs and wore
suits of immeasurable worth.

In the center of it all was the mayoral
office of Salem where a one man finds himself unable to keep the
supernatural from sweeping across his city at the turn of night. He
called a closed meeting with as little councilor support as he
could readily afford given the nature of what’d been uncovered a
few hours ago. These were his chosen few, the ones that knew the
dark truth behind Salem’s origins.

“So it’s concluded,” the mayor said. “The man
is what we thought him to be.”

Victor Dukane had sat in the same chair for
two decades, through thick and thin, although in a city such as
this there was plenty thick and little thin. Despite the odds,
Victor managed to keep his post and see all opposition washed away
into a sea of oblivion.

None questioned his leadership, not even the
three jackals that stood five feet away from him.

“We believe he is,” Hans Brackhaus confirmed
with a nod of his bald head. He was Victor’s oldest friend on the
council, and as such, had risen to a prominent position over the
years alongside the mayor. He wasn’t the easiest man to speak to,
but when Victor needed someone in his corner it was Hans that would
answer the call.

“And cause of death?” Victor asked.

“Indeterminable,” said the mountain of meat
sitting next to Hans. “The only certainty was that it was an animal
of considerable size.”

“How insightful, Bernhard,” said the only
female in the room, mockingly, “because we all know this town has
an
animal
problem. I know of no animal capable of doing this
to a reaper. Do you?”

Cetra Altaras was a mystery to those around.
Her ties to the city were unknown, but all that came to meet the
sultry brunette with eyes of azure crystal swore that she was the
right woman for the job. Not a single person knew what that job
entailed outside the mayor and herself, but none would dare
question her worth in city council. Not that she’d hear of it.

She was testing her fellow councilor, prying
him for information she thought he might’ve possessed. It was,
after all, his son that mysteriously came across the body in the
woods. The fact the mayor’s daughter had been present, as well,
only added the fuel to her fire.

Bernhard Wendish wasn’t one to be taken
lightly and he kept those cards close to his chest. “You know the
answer to that question as well as I,” he replied. “I can’t speak
on information I don’t have.”

The burly councilor stood a foot taller than
the already too large Hans Brackhaus. He was covered in fiery red
hair from head to toe with the nasty temperament to match. While
men of Bernhard’s ilk never seem to last long in cities such as
Salem, it didn’t stop him from throwing his weight around every
which way he pleased.