Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (30 page)

Remus was joined on both sides by the dark
princess and her faithful champion, Akil Fayed. Corina Petravic
swore up and down that they’d come to watch the fires fan from home
to home, but Remus knew the truth of the matter. She had come to
gloat.

“Quite the kingdom you’ve got here,” she
whispered into his ear.

Remus was in no mood for mind games, but
those were the only games the dark princess was taught. Theirs was
a dysfunctional family; one that saw the darkest parts of their
humanity rewarded, and acts of mercy scolded.

“I like to think it’s a work in progress.”
Remus kept his gaze on the fiery sight below. Not once did he
glance over to the princess he spoke. “Less than a week ago you
appeared on my doorstep and now the city erupts into flames. I find
that alarmingly coincidental. Don’t you?”

“Don’t be so hard-pressed to find an enemy in
me,
my liege
,” said Corina Petravic, the scorn emanating
from her lips. “I haven’t taken up arms against you, although I’ve
every right to do so. I came for the wolfling at our maker’s
behest. Whatever fucked up shit this town’s got going on it
happened centuries before I got here. So, tell me, Remus, why did
you
come here?”

Remus refused to take the bait and focused on
what he read between her lines. She knew something about the forces
below, something Remus could use in this hour of need.

“What do you know?” he asked, finally giving
into demand and turning towards his older sister. “Who commands
these invaders?”

Corina cackled in delight at the confirmation
of what she could hardly believe to be true. The vampire king
didn’t know the enemy he faced.

“My, my, my,” said the dark princess, “you
really don’t have any clue, do you? I never thought the day would
come when my own brother failed to see the dangers that lay in
wait. Let’s just say that old sins have found their way back to the
city of Salem.”

If Corina wanted him to know the truth she
would’ve said so already. She wasn’t going to spoil the surprise.
Not for the man that’d ended her maker and stolen her crown.

While both of them were born in the seventh
century, Corina was fifty years his elder. Her advanced years
amounted to little in the vampire court and she had to witness
Remus rise above her in station. He ruled beside the vampire queen
as her dutiful right hand, her executioner in black, and wherever
Xenia pointed her finger he was sent to set fire to everything that
moved; but when the Old World kingdom fell and he fell from his
pedestal, Corina Petravic was there to pick up the pieces. Now the
crown was his and the weight of it threatened to drag the two of
them deeper into the abyss.

“I need to speak with your manservant,” Remus
said.

His tone was cold and his stare a bottomless
pit of black. To call a man bound in chains since birth a servant
was as discreditable as one could be without crossing one of their
many divided lines. He wanted the dark princess to both see and
hear the contempt he had for the man that’d tried to take his life.
More than that, he needed her to believe it.

Akil Fayed had no answer for him other than
the subtle shake of his head. He was nervous, fearful, and unsure
of the king in black’s reason for such a request. The vampire queen
would’ve placed his head on a pike for much less, and while Remus
was unlike her in many ways, there were a select few in which they
couldn’t have been closer.

“That’s not going to happen,” replied Corina,
flatly and without hesitation. “Akil’s needed by my side. There are
dangerous beasts out tonight, you know.”

“This won’t take long,” Remus insisted.

“No.”

Remus turned from the beleaguered vampire to
meet the gaze of his older sister. He could see the specks of amber
in the reflection of her eyes, specks that slowly moved from one
side of her iris to the other.

He was losing his kingdom.

“You defy your king such a simple request?”
Remus asked with narrowed eyes. “Think of my rule what you will,
but I’ll not have the kindred populace divided between us.”

This was the moment where Remus would find
out her far he could test his rebellious sister. She could slap him
around, curse his name in the companion of others, but to deny the
request of the monarch was to open a door few kindred dared open
over the centuries.

“As if there would be any division among
kindred,” sneered Corina, “but I’ll let you have this one. Consider
it a parting gift, for you won’t receive another.”

When the laughter hit she could barely keep
her belly from being split in half. The very thought of a vampire
that would side with Remus Castalon was enough to keep her in
stitches while she descended the many stories of Blackrose Manor in
a single bound. A hundred years ago Remus could’ve mustered the
forces the keep his kingdom intact. That day wasn’t today, a fact
both of them knew in equal measure, but still they continued the
same dance they’d been locked in since birth; a dance in which
Corina was often forced to lead.

The king had been granted his one wish and
given him what he needed most. It wasn’t Akil that the man in black
wanted. It was the knowledge that she wasn’t ready to move against
him. Not yet.

In the meantime, there was much to be done.
He had to do the one thing in this world Xenia Parentucelli wasn’t
capable of doing. He needed to find allies among the worst kinds of
monsters.

“Akil Fayed,” said Remus with those black
eyes back on his onetime friend, “we’ve much to discuss. Wouldn’t
you agree?”

Chapter Fifty Two

Night Kings: Old World Cull

Gregory Blackman

Tooth Decay

Vengeance was the only thought that circled
the mind of Lukas Wendish. There was much for him to avenge, more
for him to atone, and wherever he ended up on this night it would
be for the pack that bore him. He could smell through the smoke
filled air who led the pack of werewolves on approach. He could
think of no other more qualified to command or more ruthless to
rule.

It was Kaleb Ramsey that came, and with him,
he brought the entirety of his new pack.

Lukas, still in his human skin, ran full
stride into his pack. Several of them appeared through the wall of
smoke and lunged at him with their claws extended. He avoided their
attacks, but it put him at a disadvantage when the last of the
warriors came.

The serrated teeth of a werewolf ran down the
side of his shoulder. He shrugged off the assault, but the damage
had already been down. He left shoulder was sliced wide open. It
wasn’t enough to down him, but until the wound healed he would have
to fight back with only the one arm.

When Lukas looked up from the cut he found
the werewolves had formed a circle around him. He moved slowly
around to find identity each and every wolf that’d fallen under
Kaleb’s sway. In their eyes he saw that some of his childhood
friends, his uncle, and even his beloved godfather stood in a
circle around him.

He saw them for what they were. They were the
ones quick to turn when the Wendish clan needed them the most. Now
they were no more than rabid wolves, bloodthirsty animals with the
strength of ten men.

“Leanne,” said Lukas as he spotted an auburn
werewolf mixed into the crowd, “I never wanted this for you. Not
you.”

There were a few gashes along her frame that
were hard to place underneath her matted auburn fur. As a member of
the worker caste, it fell to her, and others like her, to learn,
build, and earn for the pack. She was never meant to know the
horrors of war, but she would soon learn, nonetheless. Then another
caught the corner of his eye.

“Mother,” he growled as his canine teeth
descended. “What have I done to you?”

Even the silver-haired Aubrey Wendish had
joined the ranks of the warriors. Her fur was painted with her own
blood, some from hunks of fur and meat and bone still unhealed. It
was the signs of a power struggle. A struggle his mother lost. But
where was the victor?

Each of the werewolves frothed at the mouth
and stared back at Lukas with their beady, amber eyes. They were
confused by the human before them. He smelled like one of them,
carried himself like one of them, but he stood on two feet, on the
night where none blessed by the moon gods could walk.

The disturbance frightened them, and once one
began to bark, the rest of the werewolves were quick to clamor in
disapproval. If there was one thing Lukas remembered from his
father’s lectures, it was that there was nothing more unpredictable
than a frightened werewolf.

“I don’t want any more bloodshed,” Lukas said
as the sole voice of reason amid a pack of ravenous killers. “I
don’t want to hurt any of you.”

“Bold words,” said Kaleb Ramsey, his head
clouded by thoughts of bloodletting and violence. He sifted between
some of the wolves and bared his fangs in an aggressive manner. “Do
you expect… to fight us all?”

“If I have to,” he replied.

Kaleb kicked earth and rock up into the air
as he entered into the middle of the circle. He had a miserable
scowl stretched across his wiry werewolf lips and eyes that hadn’t
left Lukas since they were put upon him. From the death of the
reaper to the fiery ends of their brethren, his hands were steeped
in the events that led to this night. He fought for this pack. He
killed for his pack. Now Kaleb Ramsey would have to behead the
Wendish heir for his pack.

“My pack!” barked Kaleb with a snap in Lukas’
direction. “This is my pack!”

“And what a pack it is.” Lukas took another
turn to survey the werewolves Kaleb called his pack. “I see a half
dozen of your goons and the mistreated few that survived your rise
to dominance. Whatever you call this assortment of killers it bears
no resemblance to its Wendish roots.”

But before Lukas was done his inspection of
those that flocked to his banner, he made sure to turn his back to
the leader of this so-called pack. To turn ones back to an enemy
was often a grave insult among the warrior caste. That was how
Lukas intended it.

Lukas wanted to instigate his opponent, force
his hand. He wanted to see the bite behind the bark and he wanted
it done before the other werewolves lost control and devoured him
whole.

“This is
our
night,” barked Kaleb, in
a deep rumble, only it wasn’t Kaleb that spoke any longer. It was
the voice of the moon god behind that pulled the strings; the one
that guided him on this night. “How dare you come to us… in that
form?”

“Blasphemous,” one of the werewolves
sneered.

“Outrageous.”

“Let us feast on his fleshy remains.”

“Now, now,” said Kaleb Ramsey. “This one is
mine. Mark my words, brothers… we’ll see two kings fall on this
night. It will truly… be blessed night… for the Ramsey clan.”

Kaleb kicked up the ground beneath him and
cast as imposing a shadow as he could. He snarled and snapped,
cursed and howled, everything but launch an attack. He wouldn’t
give Lukas the satisfaction of an quick death. He wanted the beast.
Not the man.

The others howled in pleasure as Lukas turned
into the werewolf he was meant to be. It was a slow, painful
change, onset by the desire to tear this wolf to shreds. He
clutched at himself in pain and dug his fingernails into his flesh
to help the wolf tear it from their body.

“You killed members of your own,” Lukas
growled as Kaleb postured from side to side. “You turned your
bloodlust to the innocent; and to add insult to my father’s legacy,
you laid hand and tooth on the mother of the pack! The ninth circle
isn’t deep enough for the likes of you!”

Kaleb lunged to Lukas, but he narrowly
avoided the attack and escaped to the side. It proved to be a
momentary delay to the bloodshed, as Kaleb was quick to respond
with a snap in his direction.

Lukas howled in anguish as his blood
spattered to the dirt below. He pulled his hind legs back, but it
only deepened the jagged teeth that were clamped down on them. He
whimpered and grimaced in agony, but through the pain and the tears
he managed to unlatch the werewolf’s jaws.

“Is that the best this… wannabe pack master
can do?” Kaleb asked as he licked the blood from his lips. “I don’t
know of the pack the
boy
speaks… but if he’s the best
they’ve got… I don’t exactly fear their recourse.”

Kaleb’s wolves cackled in laughter, all of
them, even his mother and close friend were forced to honor their
leader in bloody mirth. But the newfound pack master would see
their spirits short lived. He lunged at Lukas again, but this time
the scorned heir had time to counter the blow.

Lukas caught Kaleb with a slash from his good
side that sent the werewolf back to the edges of the circle. He
moved to counter the blow, but a fire deep inside struck him at the
wrong time and caused the wayward heir to stumble on his way.

Kaleb seized the opportunity before him and
came at Lukas with all the weight at his disposal. He knocked Lukas
to the ground and began to tear into the his side without abandon.
He tore at his ribcage. He tore at his back. He tore at everything
not covered in a fresh coat of red paint.

Lukas couldn’t fight back, but it wasn’t from
the pain inflicted by his aggressor. Worse than the claws that
eviscerated his frame was the fire that spread across each and
every one of his extremities.

“Now, Lukas Wendish,” said Kaleb, towering
over the heir while still on all fours, “everything that belonged
to you will be mine.”

Before Kaleb’s jaws could clamp around the
throat of Lukas, he was pushed back by the swipe of a forearm. The
bloodthirsty pack leader of the Ramsey clan was dazed, but not out
of the fight. He went to strike again, but was caught off guard by
a tawny light before him.