Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (14 page)

Suddenly Gemma’s head became overcrowded with
a rush of emotion and dark thoughts. She was abandoned by friends
and family, left to walk this mired path alone, without so much as
a mother to lean on for support. There were others in which she
could commune. Others she could lean against during these tenebrous
times. That’s where she headed now, through darkness and despair,
to a place that had once been a second home to the troubled
teen.

Just when Gemma Kohl thought she couldn’t
take any more of the darkness’ torment she stepped through an
unseen portal and was transported to a distant land; a land where
the black veil could not penetrate. She was far removed from the
pitch black landscape of the southern forests of Salem. It was a
serene setting filled with bright lights and the chirping of small
birds, a peaceful place, where the shadows of night dared not tread
in fear of the light’s vested interest in these hallowed
grounds.

Gemma stood in the sun’s light with hands
raised high beside her and let the anguish fade away from the
recesses of her heart. This wasn’t a place she came to often, but
desperate times called for desperate measures and Salem could no
longer wait for their kind to unite.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said a
woman’s voice from behind the sole sycamore amidst a field of
yew.

“None know that better than I,” Gemma
replied. This was the moment she both desired and lamented, for it
meant the beginning for one and the end for another. “I’m only here
because Marianne isn’t.”

Marianne Kohl was many things to many people,
but a mother wasn’t one of them. She was known for her unannounced
departures, sometimes for months on end, and never with an
explanation when she returned. Regarded by many as a seer among
their kind, Marianne was blessed with the gift of foresight. It
gave her a prominent role within their society, but not all saw
these gifts as blessed. To Marianne it was only known as curse. She
rebelled against her nature and found solace on the run, apart from
humanity, where she could receive no more glimpses of ill
fortune.

This time Marianne Kohl had vanished off the
face of the New World. Not be to seen nor heard by friend or
daughter. Gemma was never alone during these times. She had the
sisters to give her the care and supplies she needed to survive. It
for hardly ideal for sisters and for Gemma, but they carried on
because that’s what they did. Through the good and the bad they
would accept the city of Salem and all its citizens, warts and
all.

“You’ll come to learn the error of those
words one day, child,” said Cetra Altaras as she moved from behind
the ashen sycamore and made her way to the beset young woman. “You
come when all others stay well enough away. Why is that?”

“I felt a disturbance in Salem,” Gemma
replied with assertion. “Now I find it outside our most sacred
grounds.”

Cetra scrunched her nose in recognition of
the same fate of affairs. There were limits to how much she could
reveal to one not yet in the inner circle. Gemma’s mother held a
place beside the high priestess, but until such time as the sisters
could decide, it was a place that remained vacant.

Long have these rules bound Cetra and her
ancestors. Long have they been their sole reason for existence.
They held powers few could imagine, fewer could understand.
Exposure to the outside world would mean the end of them; for the
second time. Still, Cetra reckoned, there were none more
trustworthy than the young Gemma Kohl, none more prepared for the
tests ahead.

“I’ve been here all night,” she revealed. “I
can’t quite place it, but I can’t quite shake it away, either.
Something’s happened to our sister city. Only, I wasn’t sure of it
until you walked through our front door. You’re mother spoke to you
of the second pillar in Charleston?”

“She did, ma’am.”

“Nature has shifted against us,” said Cetra
with a lump in her throat. “Never before has this happened. Not to
us. Not even while the humans set our sisters afire in days past. I
came here in search of help from those not affected by this dark
parasite.”

“And what did they have to say?”

“Nothing,” she answered solemnly. “They have
gone silent. Whatever comes to Salem it comes not for the vampires
or werewolves. It comes for us, dear sister, and I fear it’s
already been to Charleston.”

“What must we do?” Gemma asked.

As was custom amongst their people, she knelt
down before the high priestess and sunk both hands into the dirt
below. With a formal vow in their ancient tongue she became an
extension of her priestess’ will. She would stand against the
darkness, and she would stand proud, for she had the back of all
those she swore to protect.

Cetra placed a hand on the young sister’s
matted hair, and said, “We cannot wait any longer. We call forth
the others.”

Chapter Twenty Six

Night Kings: Dayside

Gregory Blackman

Scars

Elsa knocked on the front door of her wayward
friend. It went unanswered so she knocked again, and again, until
the man inside had no choice but to confront the trespasser. She’d
walked far from her gated community in the north to the farmland in
the western edges of the city. It was a stark contrast to the
busybody nature of her neck of the woods, where people kept to
themselves. This was a place where you stuck together or you didn’t
stick around. That could have been because they were all monstrous
wolves, but it was a realization Elsa had only just arrived
upon.

Lukas’ father owned a large tract of land and
the boundless fields around—all for his pack to roam. It was land
untouched my man’s hand, a place that animals could claim their
own, a place the werewolves could return to innate forests that
bore their ancestors. There was an entrance to these strange,
foreign lands and it lay at the edge of the city’s border. That
entrance was the Wendish estate. The last home on a dead end street
that went on for miles until it reached his wooden gates.

The Wendish household was a sprawling country
home that had seen more additions to its layout over the decades
Bernhard stood on city council. It was a home that their family had
slaved over, to make the perfect representation of their way of
life, for themselves and the shadows it cast. As such, their blood
ran deep in its foundation; father, mother, and son. It was a home
that had been painted and repainted every single year, always a
pristine white; the color of their moon gods above.

Elsa knocked away until her knuckles were
tender and red. The door swung open and on the other side stood a
bare-chested Lukas, perturbed, covered in black veins and his own
blood.

“My god,” she gasped in alarm.

Elsa rushed to his side, but Lukas was in no
mood for what he took as pity and pushed her back across the door’s
threshold.

“You’re hurt,” Elsa said as she returned to
his side. “Shouldn’t you be healing? I mean, um, don’t werewolves
heal faster than us? I mean, aw shit… people. No, damn it, not that
I meant to imply you’re not a person. I mean humans… regular,
run-of-the-mill humans. Don’t you heal faster than humans?”

She fumbled with her words because she didn’t
know what to say. Much had taken place since the days they were
attached at the waist. She found a reaper torn limb from limb. She
bore witness to a man in black that drifted between the lines of
lucidity and insanity. And most recently one of her best friends,
the man in front of her, tried to end her life while possessed by a
lady in red.

“It’s part of the possession.” Lukas shifted
his focus to the floor, and with the slump of his shoulders, moved
aside so that she may enter unopposed. “It’ll take some time before
all my wounds heal.”

When Elsa entered the house her eyes went
immediately to the yawning cut that ran from lower back to just
below his fourth rib. She knew this as they were ribs that stuck
out like a sore thumb due to his lanky, malnourished frame.

All across that frame ran the snaked fingers
of the vampire queen, centered into clusters around his infected,
exposed tissue. No more the lady controlled him, but she would make
it clear to all he knew that she wouldn’t go down without a
fight.

“Why are all the lights out?” Elsa asked. She
looked around the darkened, empty house, and saw not a room
disturbed, save the drops of blood that originated from the
kitchen. “Your parents not home?”

Lukas’ head sunk in contention and he shook
it from side to side. “They’re out for a run while I recover.”

Both their eyes went to the festering wound
upon his chest. Elsa had seen much trauma inflicted these last few
days; witnessed events no human should lay eyes upon. So when it
came to a friend in need she refused to shrink away from his
touch.

Elsa’s hand lingered on his chest, undaunted
by the sickly black veins that seemed to recoil from her fingers,
and warm to the touch. That warmth came from the red hot blood a
werewolf who pushed away from her the moment their eyes locked.

It wasn’t lack of comfort or the insecurity
of his heart that made Lukas push away what he wanted most in this
world. There was an unseen force that’d come to his home. It was
the smell of rotten flesh and the secretions of the diseased; the
scent of his enemy, or rather their servants.

“Elsa!” growled Lukas as he rushed out the
front door to greet his concealed adversaries. “Get to the second
floor!”

Elsa wouldn’t argue the orders her sometimes
furred companion. Not when it came to his world—the night world. It
was a world recently revealed to her and the only world that seemed
interested in her any longer. Yet she couldn’t heed the entirety of
his words. Not while Lukas’ life lay on the line.

She moved to the family room where a bay
window offered her a glimpse of the many acres of land their front
lawn surveyed. Elsa placed her hands upon the window and suckered
against the glass in attempt to get as close to the action as
possible. Outside the country home stood a defiant Lukas Wendish
with the claws of his wolf extended by waist side.

The enemy he awaited came from all sides;
ghouls, the sickly and the already forgone, now empty husks for the
lady in red to control. These unwilling participants of the lady
crossed the vast fields of the Wendish land at a listless pace.
They were in no hurry to reach their destination. They had all
sides of the house covered and there was nowhere for their prey to
run, nowhere for them to hide.

Elsa waited with hushed breath as these
monstrosities drew nearer. There was a part of her that wanted to
flee this home and take her chances on the run. That part had been
buried the moment she uncovered the truth of her hometown. Live or
die, she would stand by her friend. Even if that meant she had to
do it from as far away as possible.

Lukas waited until the ghouls had all but
closed in on him before he began the transformation from man to
monster. With his hands gripped on his sides Lukas stripped away
the flesh that kept the wolf at bay.

He lunged at the ghouls without hesitation
and tore two of them to shreds before they could think to raise
their necrotized arms. His jaw clamped upon tainted flesh and bone
after hallow bone, until the first wave of the lady’s army had bled
out upon his front yard.

Elsa watched it unfold with wonder and
admiration. Lukas bled from wounds not of this fight and still he
took the offensive with those that meant him harm. The carnage was
a symphony to the feral wolf and his enemies the chords for him to
pluck, one after the other until the second and third regiments
were felled.

Elsa made a move for the front door, but
several distortions in the distance forced her to reaffix herself
to the glass in front of her. She banged on the window and shouted
out for Lukas’ attention, but it was too late for mere words to
save him.

While Lukas tore into the last of the ghouls
a dozen or more vampires descended upon the lonely cottage home. He
rose to defend himself from the attack, but was immediately struck
down by the hands of many.

Run after run they took at him, quick bursts
of offense that saw them to safety before the jaws of Lukas could
find them. They took hold of him from all sides, the teeth and
claws of his mortal enemy around his every extremity; holding,
pulling, and tearing until he fell to the ground in submission.

“Father,” he whispers through pursed lips,
“I’m sorry…”

With the last of his strength Lukas freed
himself from the hands clasped around his jaw and released a
harrowing wail into the night sky. Lukas called to those of his
kind for assistance. He called for the pack he’d all but shunned
while under the lady’s control; the same lady that laid him siege
on this night.

His call for help turned into a dire cry as
the vampires drove their fingers into his frame. Then his cry was
no more. With hands once again wrapped around his mouth he was
silenced to the world, to his family, and anyone else whose blood
boiled at the sight of these undead monsters. The wolf and Lukas
parted under duress and he changed back into the man that once
stood defiant and strong.

Elsa banged on the window to no avail. The
vampires had what they came for and no amount of distress from the
inside would change that. Not unless one of them desired a snack
after assured victory. It was then another shadow emerged from the
tree line. It moved fast and it moved alone without pack or kindred
to aid it.

The kindred atop Lukas disappeared in a burst
of blood that saw the vampires scatter in all directions. The other
vampires that surrounded weren’t prepared for the encounter and
were caught at a disadvantage when the apparition in black came for
them.