Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (10 page)

He was one of the mayor’s closest friends. He
had been for over two decades. It wasn’t likeness of character that
drove them together. It was self preservation. Unlike the vampires
with their limitless coffers, werewolves were relegated to the
dregs of society due to their moonlight affliction. Only Bernhard
Wendish never received that message and kept those that would be
his enemies close at hand.

The alliance of Dukane and Wendish saw both
families prosper over the years. One only needed to look up in the
sky while they walked the streets of downtown. It saw Bernhard to
unparalleled heights for werewolves all over the world. That
brought powerful enemies, but none ever stayed for long. Not while
Victor, Bernhard, and their unseen associate controlled the
streets.

A stir in the lobby outside brought Bernhard
to his heels. He jumped to his feet and moved to respond, but
before he could get anywhere near the door, it burst open and
stopped him in mid stride.

Bernhard was caught by the slender figure and
piercing blue eyes of Cetra Altaras. She looked him up and down
with her head tilted sideways in disbelief, and said,
“Continue.”

“Whatever do you mean?” he asked, honestly
enough with his hands raised in submission.

“Cut the act,” Cetra said with her eyes on
the cabinet Bernhard had just spent a half hour rifling through. “I
come for the same reasons you do.”

She moved to turn on the light, but the firm
hands of Bernhard reached out to bring a halt to her movement.

“You mustn’t,” he said with baited breath.
“The lights could give our plans away.”

Cetra brushed off Bernhard’s words of
warning, but at the last moment she decided it wasn’t worth the
trouble and refrained from turning the light on. She was less than
pleased with the decision and yet she couldn’t fault the fiery Slav
for his caution. One gaffe and they would lose more than their
positions alongside the mayor.

“We weren’t all born with canine vision,”
said Cetra, lip curled in distaste. She raised her hand around
waist high and faced her palm towards the ceiling. A small azure
light came to life in the palm of her hand and illuminated
everything within a meter radius, and not a thing more.

Less than daunted with the displays of his
peer, Bernhard returned to the file cabinet and continued his
search for the missing files in the bottom drawer. Cetra let him
fumble in the likeliest of places while she sidled over to the
massive oaken desk of mayor Dukane.

Cetra dumped herself in his leather clad
chair. She made no move to aid in Bernhard’s search, at least
that’s how it appeared to the werewolf across the room. She cared
little for what the pack master thought of her. Cared little what
anyone in Salem thought of her. But the secret of her doings
couldn’t be revealed to the outside world, lest she wanted a return
of the fire that consumed her precursors.

It was through the mystical hands of Cetra
that the secret coalition of Dukane and Wendish built their legacy.
They rose in power and prominence while she languished in the
impoverished parts of Salem. It wasn’t a decision taken lightly,
nor was it one made strictly of her own accord. There were others
within her collective, others that preferred to be felt rather than
seen. With the blessing of those others Cetra Altaras entered into
the union of werewolf and man. To this day she remained by their
side. Yet, it could all change in a heartbeat if they were to be
discovered by the common man.

It was a thought ever present in the mind of
Bernhard Wendish, pack master of Salem and all the land that
surrounds. He shot an uneasy glance in Cetra’s direction before he
returned to the cabinet in fear a lingered stare would cause him to
go up in flames.

Bernhard heard the stories of her kind. He’d
seen the proof. He believed her to be a witch, but in the city of
Salem that wasn’t an accusation to be taken lightly. He had every
cause to keep her at arm’s length, and yet, all the more reason to
keep her close by.

“There we are,” Cetra said.

She hadn’t moved from her position, but she
had a smirk pressed on her face that told Bernhard all he needed to
know. She’d indeed found what they’d been looking for and she did
so without moving a muscle.

“We shall have what we seek soon enough,” she
said. “You’ll want to close your eyes for this.”

Bernhard heard her words, but they failed to
register in time and he was struck with a burst of light that
burned his canine retinas. He threw his hands up to cover from the
light, but it was too late. The damage had already been inflicted.
He gave a whelp in anguish and dropped to a knee.

By the time his eyes healed he was in shock
at the powers that unfolded before him. Without leaving her chair,
Cetra had unlocked the right, middle drawer with a powerful
telekinetic energy that also saw it rise upward and on top of the
mayor’s desk.

Cetra’s hands hovered over the drawer which
was now upside down on the desk with its contents still very much
inside. She retrieved an envelope that was taped on the bottom.
When Cetra had what she wanted the drawer found its own way back to
the empty hole in the desk. It was as if it had never been touched
by her hands. That was the way Cetra Altaras operated and Bernard
was keen to pay close attention.

Cetra peeled open the envelope and withdrew a
file folder she was quick to finger through.

“What is it?” Bernhard asked.

With a glance drenched in disdain she offered
up the document to the stalwart werewolf before her.

“You’re going to want to see this,” she
answered as the papers exchanged hands. It was with their fleeting
touch of hands that Cetra let her fear slip and seep into her
friend.

“By Perun,” whispered Bernhard in thick
Slavic tongue. “He knows everything…”

The two of them, conjurer and werewolf
companion, stood silent in their embattled mayor’s office. Their
time in this office appeared to be at an end. The sins of the past
had come back to haunt them.

Chapter Nineteen

Night Kings: Sunkeeper

Gregory Blackman

Wendish Pride

To humans, possession was an affliction that
would come and go without the host being the slightest bit aware
once the vampire had no more use for them; succubae were known to
become aroused by the emotions that it brought to the surface, and
reapers were reputed to receive no effect at all. Lukas Wendish
wasn’t human and wasn’t any of the former. He was the mortal enemy
of the one that afflicted him and because of that he was struck the
hardest.

The lady in red pulled on his strings from
within, as if he was no more than a marionette to her puppeteer,
and under her near absolute control; mind, body, and soul. It
didn’t happen often among werewolves and required a willing host
for the possession to take root. That’s exactly what Lukas did upon
first arrival at the festival of the moon.

Lukas didn’t allow her into his life. He let
her into his soul.

On this night, Lukas was far removed from any
potential residents after the sudden burst of fire that’d enveloped
him in the alcove north of Salem. He tended to his wounds with
licks from his tongue in private, hidden away from the world, and
not likely to remove himself until he could greet his lady in full
health.

Lukas would give himself over to her when the
time was right. He would kneel before her and offer up himself as
sword, shield, and lover. Only now the time wasn’t right. Gemma
Kohl and the tenacious Elsa Dukane had seen to that. They opposed
their union and tried to keep the beast from the bat. The lady in
red warned of soothsayers that would attempt to keep them apart. He
just never believed it could be his own friends.

It was a warped image. Yet, it was the only
image left to a man once hell bent on the death of her kind. It’s
what Lukas would be for the rest of eternity if he didn’t break the
hold she had over him.

He gnawed on a patch of charred skin around
his paw. So consumed by the end goal Lukas was that he focused all
his attention on the task at hand. What’s why he never saw the
white blur until it was too late.

The serrated teeth of another were upon
Lukas’ throat before he knew what was upon him. Blood and strands
of ashen fur passed in and out of the corner of his eyes. He cried
in agony and tried to wrestle his attacker, but there was nowhere
to go for him now.

Suddenly the jaws of his aggressor became
unclenched. Lukas seized the chance before him and leapt to safety,
but he would soon find that safety was relative when he turned
around to find out that he faced his mother in combat. Lukas
snarled at his mother and she made sure to return the favor. Around
in a circle they stalked one another with neither willing to make
the second move.

Lukas’ mother, Aubrey Wendish, had raised him
from pup to wolf. To see him in such torment brought a tear to her
eye, but it was soon soaked up into her knotted fur along with any
trace of the boy he once was.

Lukas charged towards his mother and leapt
into the air on fast approach. He went straight for the jugular,
but missed by a wide margin and crashed down onto the ground. He
recovered from the ordeal and searched left and right for any signs
of his mother. Had Lukas been in his right mind he would’ve known
to use the inborn senses he’d been given. He was far from in the
proper state of mind, however, and soon found out the hard way
where his mother had been.

Aubrey struck from behind with a slanted
slash of her claws that saw Lukas tumble to the ground in anguish.
It hurt the aberrant werewolf as much it did his mother, but Aubrey
held true to purpose and pressed on with her assault.

Lukas dashed from side to side in attempt to
rid himself of a troublesome menace. Despite his best efforts, he
wasn’t fast enough to sway his mother from the chase and she made a
snack of his hind legs.

Aubrey dug deep into the meaty portion of her
son’s leg until she heard tendons snap beneath her teeth. He
whimpered in pain, but she wouldn’t allow that to deter her from
the task at hand. Aubrey pulled him back to the alcove she found
him and threw him against a tree for good measure.

She unhinged her jaw and let a furious roar
loose amongst the wooded area. She didn’t make another move against
her son, but she wouldn’t allow him to leave. Instead she waited
for what would come next.

It started with the contortions of the
possessed wolf’s chest and spine. Lukas grimaced in agony, the pain
almost too much to bear, and couldn’t help but yelp out to the moon
gods above to save him from such unbearable torture.

His bones shattered only to snap back into
place. All while the fur molted from his bloodied flesh. He was no
longer the wolf, and yet not quite the man he used to be. Black
vines snaked their way down his face, underneath his skin, down to
his neck where they wrapped around his ensanguined throat,
reminders of the lady and her hold over him.

The white wolf stood in front of the blood
smeared Lukas and waited until she sensed that the fight had died
out in her errant son. She, too, changed back into the form that
housed the wolf. It was a change that lacked the ferocity of the
younger wolf, but it had its share of blood and bile that would
seep from open wounds to the now crimson ground below.

These were monsters born from the bowels of
Hell. Somewhere along the way they found themselves, found their
humanity, but the monster inside still lingered to remind them of
their hellish beginnings. They would forever be man and monster, a
duality of spirits that could never be separated.

Aubrey Wendish stood before her son as bare
as the day she was born. For those born into the pack a state of
undress was more than commonplace. It was a way of life. Aubrey had
the soft eyes and round face that one wouldn’t believe possible of
holding a grudge. Yet, on this night, there rested a scowl and
furled brow that warned the one before her of where Aubrey’s
intentions lay.

Her hoary locks tumbled downwards past her
bosom to her sinewy hips where her hands were balled up into fists.
She took a step forward slowly, but when her son began to speak it
turned into a full-blown dash.

“Mother,” said Lukas softly, “I can’t take
any more—.”

Aubrey struck her son in the jaw and when he
cried out in pain she struck him again. The louder his cry of pain,
the more powerful her swing, until her knuckles her matted in the
blood of her only offspring.

“I can’t take any more…”

“You can,” Aubrey said with her fist raised
once more in the air, “and you will.”

She beat on her son, though it pained her
with every blow. Each of his cries resonated within her and only
further drove home the importance of her actions. If she failed
tonight her beloved son would no more be hers. He would forever be
shackled to the lady in red.

In a moment of clarity, Lukas reached out and
grabbed hold of his mother’s hand. He let it stay there just out of
reach of his now swollen and cracked cheek while he remained
kneeled with one leg inoperable. That sudden remembrance of his
mother was soon to sway back into oblivion as the lady once again
took hold of his mind.

“That’s it, my boy” said Aubrey, as if she
approved of his defiance. “That’s it.”

He snarled in disgust of his mother’s
noncompliance and pushed her away. He rose slowly, but assuredly,
and soon there was another standoff between mother and son. Neither
one of them moved against the other. Neither one of them wanted
to.

There are times when one must go against
their wishes. That time was now for the mother of the Salem pack.
Aubrey Wendish moved forward at a sluggish pace, but when she
reached Lukas she leapt full speed at him and struck yet again with
a forceful right hook.