Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (36 page)

“You’re rotten to the core,” Lukas bellowed
in his approach, “and I’m going to tear you apart!”

He struck her with hands of notched claw. He
struck and he struck until Corina stumbled back in a blood-soaked
mess. Then he continued his fevered onslaught once more. He wanted
to give in to his inner wolf and tear her stump from bloody stump,
but to do so would break the connection he made with the wolves of
his new formed pack. So he kept the werewolf at bay and did battle
without his rugged hide to aid him.

Corina dropped the lifeless body in her hands
and backed up listlessly in a haze of blood. With her one good eye
she caught him on second approach and stabbed at him with her hand.
Lukas tried to avoid the surprise attack, but he was caught in the
middle of his chest. His heart was missed by inches, but the damage
had been dealt and he lurched backwards almost as quickly as he’d
come at her.

She’d done him great harm, but so, too, had
she taken it in consider stride. She cupped her open hands together
and spat out more than a few teeth. She was humiliated, made a
fool, and the further she pushed her latest toy, the harder he
pushed back. Vampires were known to lose their teeth over the
centuries. Those were lesser vampires in her eyes. Her teeth would
grow back, in time, but the damage had already been dealt, her ego
bruised beyond repair. It was time to shut her experiment down,
lest it threatened to go up in the flames that surrounded her
mother’s miserable home.

“Akil,” said a fervent Corina Petravic,
“where the hell are you? I want you to crush the bones of this
impudent whelp! When he heals I want you to break them again, and
again, until he gets the fucking picture!”

“Akil?” she asked with her eyes all along the
tree line. “What the fuck, man?”

Nowhere Corina looked the sight of her
companion could be found.

“You fucking slave!” Corina howled to the
night sky with hands raised in indignation. “Where is your place if
not by my goddamn side?”

Akil came to his dark princess at last. He
appeared from behind and, with a silver dagger held above his head,
he cried, “For the king!”

Akil Fayed thrust the dagger downward, but
his maker was faster than he previously thought and the cutting
edge of his blade found a home not in her heart, but instead in her
left forearm.

Corina didn’t winch as the blade carved
through her rotten flesh, though it pained her greatly, and spun
around to meet her beloved with as cool and collected a response
she could under such circumstances. With a level hand she lopped
the head of Akil Fayed clean off in one fell swoop. It flew through
the air, round and round it spun all the while, until it
disappeared into a cloud of black smoke.

“You’re nothing to me now,” a shaken Corina
whispered as his headless body fell to the ground, “neither you nor
the man in black that sent you in his stead.”

A crestfallen Corina Petravic sunk to the
ground beside her beloved. She knew his reasons, but it didn’t make
it any easier for the dark princess to bear. Akil Fayed had been
there as none other had before or after him. He was her protector,
though she needed none. He was her navigator, though she could see
clear across the oceans; and he was her lover, though it was often
a thankless role.

Akil Fayed did all of that for the chance to
stand next to her in times both thick and thin. Now he didn’t stand
at all.

“That damned honor of yours,” said Corina, a
single tear streaming down her cheek. “I always knew he had
something on you… I just never believed it could be greater than
what I had… what
we
had…”

A slight sob from the dark princess could be
heard atop the muffled cries from the populace below. The dark
robed men had torched the suburbs. Now it was the commercial
district of the downtown core that burned at their touch.

She was humiliated, overcome with enough raw
emotion to send her off the edge again, and fraught with worry over
the prospect of a long life alone. She could feel herself begin to
slip into the darkness, lose herself, and close herself off to
anyone that stood close at hand.

Twisted thoughts rushed through the head of
Corina as she contemplated a life without her beloved. Akil Fayed
wasn’t the only man to share her bed, but he was the only one she
came back to time and time again. She couldn’t lose another, not
now and not ever.

To see that come to pass would mean total
loss of control to the voices the taunted her from within. No, she
determined then and there, Lukas would be her other half. He must,
lest she lose herself completely to the imaginary world inside her
head.

She was pulled in all directions. Some of the
voices wanted her to tear Lukas Wendish apart for the many wrongs
he committed, others wanted to see not only the werewolf drained of
his essence, but of all those down below that would stand against
her. The voices, each and every one of them, yearned for the blood
that would further steep Corina Petravic in the throes of
madness.

“If you weren’t already doomed, Remus
Castalon,” she shrieked as the lifeless body before her molted into
ash, “I would fry up your bones myself!”

Corina wasn’t sure where to lay the brunt of
her vehemence. Remus would soon join the ranks of the dead, the
witches and werewolves among them. All she had was a purebred
werewolf that refused to bow at the feet of his betters. Corina
wasn’t going to kill him. She would hurt him, over and over again,
and then she would make him love her.

At this moment it all came to a silent crawl
for Corina Petravic, for she was without the voices that scolded
her every action. They waited with bated breath in what each of
them saw happen next.

The sadistic monarch turned just in time to
catch the glint of the moon’s light against werewolf claws. A meaty
swathe of claw was taken to her midsection that saw chunks of
intestine, spleen, and stomach strewn across the deadened ground.
Corina tried to stuff what remained of her innards back inside her
cavernous husk, but it was to no avail and, little by little, all
her guts fell to the ground.

“Dearest, why?” she asked with a soft hand to
the neck of her newly beloved. “We could’ve built such a pretty
life for ourselves.”

The woman that once held total control over
Lukas Wendish toppled before him to the dead grass below. She
desperately tried to reach out and grab hold of him for support,
but she couldn’t summon the strength to wrap her boney fingers
around his ankles.

“Dearest,” the dark princess repeated before
her head slumped into the puddle of blood beneath her. “I forgive
you…”

Lukas stood both in shock of his actions, and
how thoroughly he pursued them. He more than halted the princess of
the vampire kingdom. He tore her apart and left her in a pool of
her own entrails. He waited for a few moments for her body to come
to ash, but the cries were louder, more pronounced than before.

It wasn’t that his people needed him. It was
that the whole city of Salem needed him and his friends. Corina
Petravic may have her allies in this world, but they weren’t here.
It was the werewolves, the witches, and the vampires that were
here, on this night, and it was them that were charged with the
protection of the sacred city of Salem.

The sisters had Cetra Altaras to guide them
in these fated hours. The vampire had their king in black, if he
ever got off his stoop to take notice. And the nameless creatures
of the world had the unknown girl who stood for more than she could
possibly know. Where was the pack master of the werewolves?

Lukas pushed aside the thoughts of misdoubt
that clouded him and left the side of Corina Petravic’s corpse. He
hadn’t the time to watch her body turn to ash. There were lives at
stake, every one of them more important than the one he stayed with
now.

As Lukas passed into the billowed wall of
black he turned to look upon the woman that had taken his life from
him. A hint of a red interwoven with black lingered atop the hill.
It was the vampire princess, Corina Petravic, and while life didn’t
return to her body, it didn’t turn to the ash that took all kindred
spirits upon their second death. He couldn’t waste another minute
on the miserable princess and kept his pace towards the city that
burned.

He could feel the emotions of those under his
attunement. His werewolves were almost upon the dark robed invaders
and they aimed to meet them head on, with or without their master
to lead them. Not only did his pack need him, they needed him to be
strong, or every single one of them will be no more than fodder to
their cannons. He didn’t need to win a war tonight. That was for
the absentee gods to decide. All he needed to do was prevent a
massacre.

Lukas never wanted the mantle of pack master.
That was for his father. Had the circumstances been right, he
might’ve turned around and given that leadership over to Kaleb
Ramsey in the years that proceeded. Kaleb proved himself unworthy
of that title. Perhaps, as word spread of what happened here
tonight, he would prove himself equally as unworthy of his father’s
title.

There was only one way to know for sure.

Chapter Fifty Six

Night Kings: Old World Cull

Gregory Blackman

The Streets Run Red with Blood

Salem was known across the land as an idyllic
port city open to any that wished to make it their home. There were
five star accommodations on every block; colossal stadiums for more
sports teams than a city should have, and million dollar beach
homes that lined the coast of the Atlantic. On the surface, Salem
was a city anyone and everyone would love to call their home. Then,
when you did as the young Elsa Dukane had done and scratched just
beneath the surface, one could find a world far beyond their realm
of comprehension.

Of course, the Salem humanity saw wasn’t
close to the dark truth sealed underneath the stone towers that
made up the city’s main streets. In the historic city of Salem,
more than any other city in the New World, the supernatural races
not only lived, but thrived within the community. It was rarely
perfect harmony the supernaturals found themselves in, but they
managed to survive the most ancient of rivalries and lay claim to
the same city walls.

Those walls were about to come down tonight.
The Brotherhood of the Crescent Moon, after nearly one millennia of
banishment, had returned to
their
city and this time they
wouldn’t be so quick to leave.

While brothers on the inside used their gifts
to shut down the power plant and the cellular towers, the others
moved to strike the now blinded city. The swirled mass of black
that was the warlocks came from the mountains to the west and set
fire to all the homes of the suburban districts. Hundreds were
butchered, thousands displaced from their houses, and nowhere they
could run would be far enough away. The warlocks came for the city
of Salem and for all that fouled their sacred grounds.

The dark robed men moved into the downtown
core where they came face to face with those that once fled their
homes in distress. These were people that were tired and fearful
for their lives, but they were still human, and now they had been
pushed too far.

The populace rallied with whatever weapons
they could find, or fashion, and moved against the horde of black
soon to come around the corner. The humans, armed with baseball
bats and knives, fought with valiance against the warlocks on the
street, but in the end their attempts could do little other than
delay the inevitable.

“Purge them,” beckoned the dark robed warlock
in the front of the pack. “See the blasphemers gone from this
world!”

Some of the humans were struck down by bolts
of lightning or inferno, others by the way of sword, but most of
the citizens that sought to defend their home survived because they
broke against the overwhelming odds. The people in the front of the
melee pushed back against their onetime supporters in the back and
it quickly spiraled into an all out brawl among the citizens.

What remained of the crowd broke when the
whine of sirens and the flash of red and blue lights caught their
collection attention. They scattered into the winds of black smoke
and left the police officers to fend for themselves. More than a
half dozen cars peeled through the streets until their tires
squealed to a stop less than a block from the disturbance.

“Stay your ground!” the lead officer shouted
as he opened his cruiser’s door and took cover behind it. He was
joined by his fellow policemen shortly after, as they began to pop
up from behind their squad cars with weapons raised. They looked to
one another in confused expressions, unsure what to make of the
weapons their adversaries had in their possession.

“Drop your—,” the baffled lead officer
stumbled with his words as he peered in closer for a better look,
“—torches and… are those swords they’re carrying? Drop whatever
goddamn weapons you’ve got and put your hands on your air!”

The words of those sent to serve and protect
held no sway over the warlocks that came for them. When only a few
yards remained between the two sides, one of the policemen panicked
and fired off a shot into the crowd. All of the officers opened
fire in response. They emptied their clips in a timely fashion and
waited there with mouths gaped wide at what their eyes witnessed
next.

Every bullet the policemen fired was stuck in
midair, inches from the warlocks the rounds were meant for, now
carried forward by unknown hands as the dark robed men continued
their death march.

One of the warlocks raised his torch into the
air and saw its fire doused with his mind before he relinquished it
to the ground beside him. With his hand now freed, the veiled
warlock extended a single skeletal finger in the direction of the
bullets.