Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (4 page)

Elsa wasn’t the kind of girl to take anyone’s
crap and when she stood up for another the girls were quick to turn
on her. She could handle herself in a fight, but against odds few
could overcome, she was trampled underneath too many feet to count.
Gemma saw something in her that few managed to see and when she
entered the skirmish the other girls were fast to back down. It
would turn out that Lukas Wendish wasn’t the only one to hear of
the Kohl bloodline. They children had every reason to fear her.
They just didn’t know the reason why.

Gemma and Elsa never demanded anything of
each other; only that they be there for one another when no one
else would be.

“You’re a good friend,” Gemma said. “Better
than you realize—.”

“Do you hear that?” interrupted Elsa, alarmed
with her ears perked forward. “I think I hear something
outside.”

The noise was faint, but it was all too
present inside the thinly walled bungalow. Slowly it became louder,
until it became apparent that it wasn’t one noise they heard. It
was many.

“Ladies,” said Lukas at a hurried pace, “get
in here now!”

Both Elsa and Gemma rushed into the kitchen,
where Lukas had taken up position, hunched over the sink to peer
out the one window in the room. They joined him on both sides and
looked to the park behind where more than a few dark figures could
be seen.

The silhouettes crept closer, but it wasn’t a
direct path they took. They swayed back and forth, red eyes aglow
in the night with their purpose clouded even to themselves as they
moved forward to the tune of another. From all sides they came,
ever closer, until they were upon the walls that kept the three
friends safe.

Chapter Six

Night Kings: The Lady in Red

Gregory Blackman

The Lady Cometh

Before Elsa could question the nature of the
ominous figures outside the home, Lukas dashed off towards the
front door with eyes of steel. He barricaded the door with little
more than his hands. Whatever he thought would happen, he believed
it to be soon.

At first there was no sign of the growing
horde outside. Then they came and they wouldn’t cease until an
entrance had been gained. Lukas barely kept the door for swinging
wide open with rotten hands aflutter, all in attempt to jam the
doorway and gain access. He knew not where these monsters came, nor
their purpose, but he knew enough to fear their wrath.

“And these things would be?” a less than
enthused Elsa asked. In one night her entire world had come apart
at the seams. Everything she’d known to be true was put to
question. Salem always had its dark roots; she knew that well, but
to read of, and to witness were two entirely different realms of
conception.

“No time,” Gemma said. “We can’t stop them
from getting inside. Let’s get Lukas. We need to get out of
here—.”

Gemma was cut short as two hands broke
through the window. They clasped around her chest and pulled her
backwards as she fought them off to no avail. It was Elsa that came
to her rescue with a kitchen knife in hand. She hacked at the
leathery flesh, and hacked, and hacked, but this was a monster that
could feel no pain.

In fact, this monster could feel only one
thing in this world. Not anguish, hatred, love, or compassion.
Hunger was all it knew. All it could yearn for. After what felt an
eternity to the young woman, running nonstop on pure adrenaline,
Elsa saw her task complete when her attacker’s arms had only bone
to hold itself together. She pulled Gemma from the monster’s grasp
and the two of them fled to the living room.

Lukas hadn’t fared any better on his side.
Nearly a dozen hands had managed to insert themselves inside the
doorway and made it impossible for the door to close. He tried as
best he could, but it was clear to both Elsa and Gemma that he only
proved to delay the inevitable.

“Get the door!” he shouted with a fleeted
glance backwards. “C’mon, there’s no time!”

Lukas needed a weapon; a bat, a knife,
anything of use. He needed something supernatural, but the fear of
this dark revelation coming to light was a fate near
indistinguishable from death. It wasn’t until his friends aided in
the blockade of the doorway that he was able to obtain such a
weapon, albeit one with considerably less bite.

He returned a moment later with a butcher’s
knife in his hand and words of caution for his female friends. A
war cry broke out in the living room as Lukas charged forward with
the blade high in the air and a fire in her eyes. He whacked at the
exposed flesh without abandon until both his friend and he were
painted in red mist.

“We need to go,” maintained Gemma at a
fervent pace. “We need to get the hell out of here!”

Gemma had every reason to fear what lay
beyond the door. It meant more than a few dozen undead men parked
on her front lawn. It was the figure above them, the one unseen,
and if word spread of what these monsters laid eyes upon once
inside, the Kohl bloodline would be but a whisper in the wind come
sunrise.

Lukas paused in his assault on the front door
and turned towards the kitchen. More undead men and women were
climbing inside the kitchen window. They crawled on hands and
knees, unaware that they could rise to their feet, and all the
while they closed in on the disorientated group of friends.

“Now!” Gemma cried. “And I mean right
fucking
now!”

They ran from the front door and out of the
living room, narrowly missed by a number of outreached hands as
they headed to Gemma’s bedroom. It wasn’t the best of plans and
even those less clairvoyant than her could see that. Even the
obstinate lug head she let accompany her to the dance noted the
plan as such the moment her bedroom door slammed shut. They needed
to escape, but without a window in her room that proved impossible
to do in an easy fashion.

The attic was the only safe way out and Gemma
saw to the preparations immediately.

“Does someone want to fill me in?” Elsa
demanded. “I know this seems the norm to the two of you, but I’m
here, and I’m going out of the damned mind!”

“Calm down,” a sullen Lukas said. “We can
talk this over when the sun rises.”

“What does the bloody sun have to do with
anything?” she asked with her hands flying every which way.
“Someone better start with the answers. If I’m to die in whatever
bloodbath this is I’m doing it with a clear conscience!”

Gemma didn’t know what to say to her
beleaguered friend. Lukas could do as he pleased, she’d let him for
some time. Yet, for Gemma some secrets weren’t hers to share. All
she could do now was focus on the task at hand and see it through
to that sunrise Lukas had spoke of. There wasn’t an access outside
of the kitchen, but if there was one thing this home had been over
the years it was unreliable. With Lukas’ butcher’s knife in hand
Gemma began to carve her path to escape.

The moment Elsa quieted down was the moment
she started back up again. This time it was Lukas alone that took
the brunt of her questions. It was a scene that’d taken place a
hundred times between them, but never before had it come at such
expense to their friendship.

“Is that a bite?” she asked.

Lukas fumbled around to see the mark Elsa
mentioned. It was hard to see what she’d seen past the blood
spattered across his lanky frame, but there it was, on his forearm
and once noticed it couldn’t be unseen.

“It appears so,” Lukas said.

“Well,” said Elsa, “what the hell? Are those
zombies? Were you bit by a freaking zombie?”

“No,” he said matter-of-factly and went back
to his guard on the door. “They’re not zombies. At least they’re
not zombies in the conventional sense.”

“What the hell, man?” she asked yet another
question that wouldn’t be answered. “How can you be so sure of
yourself?”

“They’re called ghouls,” said both Lukas and
Gemma in near perfect harmony.

They shot one another a glance before they
turned back to Elsa with blank expressions on their face. They
hadn’t meant to reveal themselves, but the persistent Elsa Dukane
managed to grind them down to the point of exhaustion, where they’d
blurted out what was obvious to some and alien to others.

“That’s fantastic,” Elsa blurted out as she
threw her hands into the air. “Now I know the politically correct
name for the flesh-muncher that’s going to eat me!”

“Wait,” Lukas said, soothingly.

“You can wait for a damn minute,” Elsa said.
“I’m not going to stop until I get some answers—.”

“I said wait for a second,” said Lukas, now
more forceful. “I don’t hear anything.”

“And I sure as sin don’t hear any
explanations,” Elsa pouted.

“That’s not what I mean.” Lukas threw his
hands up in the air in a similar manner as Elsa had once done
moments earlier to drive home a point. He wasn’t sure if it landed,
but it provoked a sour response from Elsa so he took that as
something done right. “You’re impossible. You knew that,
right?”

“Stop fighting,” said Gemma as she lowered
the knife from the ceiling. “I hear it… or rather… I don’t hear
anything at all.”

“What are you two talking about now?” Elsa
asked.

Gemma and Lukas spoke of the other side where
the ghouls had taken root. No more did they scratch at the door and
no more did they stumble along the lone corridor towards her room.
Wherever the ghouls had gone it was no of their own accord. Not
while the chance of warm flesh lay on the other side of the
door.

“You can’t,” a panicked Elsa cried out as
Lukas placed a hand on the doorknob. “Don’t do it!”

But it was too late for Elsa’s words of
warning. Lukas threw open the door and struck as intimidating a
pose he could, hoping for the best while he prepared for the
worst.

It turned out to be neither the best nor the
worst case scenario for the three friends previously locked up in a
bedroom. Sprung from their cage the group exited the bedroom and
slowly began to make their way down the lone hallway of the Kohl
home. They bunched up close in case any stray ghouls jumped in
their direction, but there were none left to spare, at least none
capable of harm.

Gemma’s living room was awash in crimson from
hardwood to plaster. It was from the rotten, oxidized blood of the
now lifeless ghouls. They littered the room, or rather what
remained of their eviscerated corpses, cast aside seemingly one by
one as they were drained of blood. It was at the center of the
living room that a man stood, but no ordinary man it was, for
they’d all seen this man before.

It was the man in black and he stood as
unassuming as any man could be while holding the forearm of another
to his lips. It wasn’t enough to drink of his enemies, as mindless
they may be, he had to gorge himself on their blood.

He turned his head leisurely in their
direction and flashed Elsa a toothy smile of row upon row of
razor-sharp fangs. They sunk back into his mouth and soon the face
of a monster unlike she’d ever seen became that of the mysterious
man she once swooned over.

Chapter Seven

Night Kings: The Lady in Red

Gregory Blackman

Until Sunrise

Lukas, still enraged over their fight
earlier, raced towards the man in black with everything he had
left. Lukas knew what the man was. Knew it since the blow he’d
received on the ballroom floor. There weren’t many men that could
bruise both flesh and ego, and do so in the name of defense. Not to
a man of the Wendish bloodline. And still, just as it had been on
the ballroom floor, everything he had wasn’t enough.

Only this time it wasn’t of the man in
black’s will. Lukas found that he’d been frozen in place by an
invisible force. He said not a word. He couldn’t. Not while the
unseen hand clutched at the fabric of his being. All of a sudden
that same hand relinquished its grip on Lukas and he collapsed to
the floor under his weight.

Unaware of what happened to him; Lukas
slinked back to the company of his friends, and asked, “Does
someone want to tell me what the hell just happened?”

Elsa couldn’t help but note the look on the
man in black’s face while it all went down. He was just as
interested as to the source of Lukas’ mysterious time lapse.

“What the hell are you?” Elsa asked of their
mysterious intruder.

“What I am is no concern to you, miss,” said
the man in black, gaping smirk plastered across his ashen face.
“Yet, it would appear at least one of you is already well
aware.”

“
Who
are you?” Gemma asked.

Gemma waited until now to insert herself in
the conversation. The man in black saved their lives, of this she
was more aware then the others, but he was no friend to them.

The man took a stiff bow in their direction,
and said, “Remus Castalon is the name and I fear the fault is mine
that you aren’t already well aware. Now it’s been some time since
I’ve enjoyed the company of others, but I do believe it’s proper to
announce oneself and their auxiliary before they demand it of
another.”

“…The fuck did he just say?” Lukas asked as
he looked to Elsa and Gemma for support. He would find none given
and sunk down low with the shake of his head. “Aw, never mind.”

“What’re you doing here?” Gemma asked. “Your
entrance couldn’t have come at a better time. I know what you are.
I know what you do. So I ask you once more. What are you doing
here?”

“I do enjoy a feisty one,” Remus said,
mockingly, “though I had pegged the shorter one for that role.”

“Hey!” Elsa was quick to shout out before she
realized the precarious balance her life hung in. “Aw, never
mind.”

“My thoughts were to save the young man at
the festival of the moon,” the man in black said. “The young man
beside you had other intentions and it led to an ill-timed reveal
at the manor. I should note that still he remains possessed by her,
the lady in red. I could assist—.”