Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (6 page)

The wolf inside him came out with a furor not
even the possessed Lukas could know. He wasn’t Lukas Wendish any
longer. He was the wolf, now emerged from the bile of what Lukas
once was, and a creature all to himself. Part wolf and part
something entirely else in between, the monster inside Lukas stood
hunched on all fours with his broad neck arched towards the
moon.

A frenzied howl tore through the area and
sent all the creatures of the night into the darkest of recesses in
retreat. There was only one creature remained and it wasn’t the
mysterious brunette that tried to bring Lukas back from the brink.
It wasn’t a vampire and it wasn’t a werewolf. It was the most
unassuming of creatures and it watched with a great deal of intent
with its beady little eyes, for this littlest of creatures knew a
secret that few in the town of Salem were privy.

Chapter Nine

Night Kings: The Raven Watches

Gregory Blackman

Through the Looking Glass

Back in the gated community of northern
Salem, Elsa found herself in a prison of an entirely different
construct. It was a prison within her home and ruled over by an
overzealous father that couldn’t let go of the past.

Elsa had been under house arrest since the
Festival of the Moon. She ignored her father’s orders and paid the
price accordingly. She knew the severity of her decision; knew that
she’d face repercussions. Still, she took it upon herself to throw
caution to the wind and escape the confines of her house. After
all, she thought at the time, there was every bit the chance she’d
fall to her death in the shower.

Against her wishes Elsa was in the family
room at the same time as her father. They watched the news
together, or rather, tried to watch the newscasts separately while
each refused to allow the other to win another of their silent
arguments.

She knew her father loved her. It was,
however, an abundance of misplaced love that drove a wedge between
them.

That love was the reason Gemma and Lukas had
been denied entrance into her home and into her life. Gemma had
closed herself off to the world and Lukas had simply vanished off
the edge of it. She was alone.

“Another body was found today,” her father
said after almost an hour of silence. “A young man named Geoffrey
Aberdeen. Does that ring a bell?”

Elsa first thought was to tell the truth and
admit they had more than a few classes together over the years. She
didn’t know him well. He kept to himself and stuck to the audio
visual clubs after class. Still, she worried of her father’s
response and denied any prior knowledge of the individual.

“No,” she said. “His name doesn’t ring a
bell, but the Aberdeen family has my condolences.”

Victor Dukane sat slumped in his leather club
chair. He said nothing. He just stared his daughter down while he
twirled his long stemmed glass around in his boney fingers. He
wasn’t angry. He loved his daughter far too much for that. Yet,
what stirred inside him was deadlier than any bout of rage. It was
fear that guided his hand and fear that controlled him.

Salem had become a more dangerous place
overnight. None understood that better than the city’s
distinguished mayor. And still, for every dark secret he was privy
to there was another that went by unchallenged. Even those closest
to him in the city hall had their own secrets he’d yet to
uncover.

He’d thought of allowing his daughter a
glimpse into his dark world, but where would he stop? Which secrets
could he reveal and which would send her to the brink of insanity?
For once one has seen the dark truths about Salem’s true nature it
cannot be unseen. His little girl would cease to be in the blink of
an eye.

“Well,” said Victor, “you should recognize
the name Geoffrey Aberdeen. The two of you went to the same high
school for four years. He stayed home from college to help his
ailing father…”

Victor Dukane paused in mid speech and placed
a hand over his brow to shield his watered eyes from his daughter.
“He was found near the mountains to the west. He’d been there for
days… drained… drained of all his blood.”

It was hard for Victor to speak on this
matter. Not because of a dead teenager he couldn’t care in the
least for, but of the images it brought to his mind; a wife that’d
killed herself over knowledge of the supernatural and a daughter he
feared might do the same.

“What do you think it was?” Elsa asked. With
her interest now piqued she leaned over the couch to get closer to
the father she’d tried so hard to avoid.

“I fear,” Victor said superciliously, “that
we both know the answer to that.”

Elsa didn’t answer her father. She didn’t
have to. They could both see it clear as day. Vampires were at work
here. Her first thoughts went towards Remus Castalon, the man in
black, a vampire that had come to her rescue a few nights prior. He
was a monster, even she couldn’t deny that, but she still wanted to
believe he hadn’t been
the
monster to do such an awful
deed.

“It could’ve been you,” Victor said.

He placed his drink on the glass table next
to him and rose to his feet. He began to pace around the family
room, an enormous room that seemed even larger since his wife,
Laura Dukane, passed away not far from the floor he walked
upon.

“It wasn’t me.”

“You’re damned right it wasn’t,” he said,
“because you’re not to leave this home until Salem is safe from
whatever it is that’s killing off our citizens.”

“Be fair. That could be a flipping
eternity!”

“Life isn’t fair, child,” said her father,
“but we soldier on, because that’s what
we
do. This isn’t
the end of your life, Elsa. This is merely an indefinite pause for
your own wellbeing.”

“I-I can’t believe… no, you know what? Forget
it.”

There wasn’t a person in Salem that knew
better than Victor Dukane on the topic they spoke. From the moon
ash foundation his home was built to the silver crown moldings that
his roof, there wasn’t anything in this city more capable of
defense should it come to outright war between the supernatural
races.

All before the reapers inevitably came to
finish off those that remained.

“You must be careful, my daughter,” he said
somberly, “for the Salem you knew no longer exists.”

Their conversation was brought to an abrupt
halt by the ring of their doorbell. As if he’d expected a late
arrival, Victor hopped to a new tune and scuttled blithely towards
the front door without a word to his bemused daughter he’d so
quickly left behind.

Elsa slumped back into her sofa and tried to
think of a way out of her present quandary. She listened in as her
father went to the door, for what she believed to be any excuse to
remove himself from his wayward daughter’s side.

She could tell from the thick Norse accent
that it was Hans Brackhaus at the door. He was one of her father’s
most trusted confidants and his right hand in all matters he
couldn’t discuss publicly. Not even the close at hand Bernhard
Wendish or Cetra Altaras had such influence over his decisions.

“I come with good news,” Hans said from
outside the door. His baritone voice could be heard throughout the
house, long before Elsa’s father ushered him inside from the dark
and fearful night. “Are we free to speak?”

“We are,” Victor said.

“Phase two will be implemented by the end of
the week,” Hans said hurriedly. “It’s only a matter of time until
we have the answers we seek.”

“That’s good news, my friend,” said Victor,
“but it hardly comes as surprise. Was there another reason that
brought you to my door?”

“You know me well,” Hans said with a forced
smile stretched across his face. He accepted his friend’s hand of
support and was welcomed into a hallway the size of his home.

“I’m here—,” Hans paused as a lump hit his
throat, “—I’m here because we’ve found another.”

Victor motioned for his friend to lower his
voice. He looked back towards the hallway where his mutinous
daughter stood. He led Hans to the next room over so their
conversation could be held in private.

That left Elsa Dukane the rest of the house
to herself. Her father was nothing if not predictable. He would be
gone long into the night and maybe even the morning. It was a room
in which they would scheme until there was little in Salem they
didn’t have their hands steeped in. It took everything her father
had to keep the city safe. It took nearly everything she had,
too.

Elsa laid there on the sofa and pretended to
watch the news. All the while her mind wandered to the world she’d
only just gotten a taste of, a world that called to her from out of
the window. She was blissfully unaware at the time, but there was
another that’d come to the Dukane household. Only this guest hadn’t
been invited in.

Chapter Ten

Night Kings: The Raven Watches

Gregory Blackman

Minions and Makers

Remus Castalon lived in Salem longer than
anyone that had ever settled the storied city. He lived apart from
its citizens, and yet it didn’t live, at all. He hadn’t for some
time. Over 400 years if he continued to count the years as a human
would.

He watched from the forest past the iron
gates that surrounded the estate home. It wasn’t with romantic
inclinations he watched. There was something in Elsa Dukane’s eyes,
something he couldn’t see, but at the same time, couldn’t deny. It
was an indescribable quality, one he’d never seen in a human, and
one he hoped to become better acquainted with. Yet, it wasn’t for
love, power, or wealth that Remus watched. It was the pursuit of
knowledge that drove him, knowledge he believed might one day set
him free.

Since the emergence of the Hell Gate in 1447,
vampires have spread through the world like an undead plague upon
the land. In the early years, entire cities fell to their sway and
then their countries along with them. Those nosferatu that
descended from the bowels of Hell shared no traits with the men and
women they stalked. Yet they would, in time, evolve from their
simple beginnings as monsters without neither name nor recognition.
Monster and man married in an unholy matrimony that would forever
change the landscape of what it meant to be human. All before the
aptly named Order came to cleanse the haunted grounds they’d
claimed in their demonic name.

Through fire and bloodshed their kind was
driven to near extinction by those that called themselves reapers.
These were men capable of feats far beyond their complicit peers
and they turned the land against the vampires. The supernatural
race flickered into existence only to be snuffed out by the humans
that bore them.

Kindred all over the world owed one vampire,
and one vampire alone, for their continued existence. That was the
lady in red, her true name a mystery to all but those she deemed
worthy. She saved kindred from the brink of destruction, gave them
both name and purpose.

Times changed. Vampires became as civilized
as their prey and the lady that’d seen them through this darkest of
times no longer remained as a figure head for her people. Once more
the vampires descended into their dark roots and became the
monsters that mankind once feared above all others. Only this time
man wasn’t aware of the monsters that stalked them in the night.
They were foregone stories of days past that had no basis in the
real world. That’s precisely what the monsters wanted the world to
believe.

Monsters such as Remus Castalon owned the not
just the night, but all the land the darkness surveyed. Until the
moment a stronger monster came to take it all away.

One of those monsters was with him now. She
had been for some time.

“Your presence is neither needed nor
desired,” Remus said with his eyes still locked on the window.

“The needs of others hold little sway in my
decisions,” the lady responded as she moved to his side. “You know
better than most that I’ve never let anything stop me from getting
what I want.”

Remus knew all too well how the lady in red
went about getting what she wanted in life. He’d seen entire
bloodlines crushed under heel for but speaking out against her
tyrannical ways.

She never apologized for those actions. That
would’ve been seen as a show of weakness among kindred. A heavy
hand was needed to rule them and a heavier one to survive them. She
did more than survive. The lady in red thrived.

“Why return after all these years?” Remus
asked.

She looked at her once proud son, placed a
loving hand upon his chin, and said softly, “You wouldn’t ask such
a question if you knew anything of Salem.”

Remus knew far more than he wanted to know of
this city. He had built the largest mansion on the east coast of
the New World inside its boundaries. Because of the construction
required for such a feat, Salem’s population boomed and turned a
town once fraught with witch trials into a city of legend. And he
did it all from the shadows.

“Is it because of
her
you foiled my
plans for the young wolf?” the lady asked as her gaze shifted to
the family room window.

Remus didn’t respond to his dark mistress. He
kept his focus on the house and continued his thoughts towards the
young Elsa Dukane. He saw something in her. He just wasn’t sure as
to what that
thing
was.

“I thought you wanted him alive?” asked Remus
in attempt to change the subject. “Why send your grunts after
him?”

“The ghouls were no more a threat to him than
you would be to me,” said the lady with a wave of her hand. “No.
This was an excuse to separate him from his human friends. Either
the humans he was with would have perished or he would have
alienated himself from them forever. All he needed was to transform
into the beast that he is. You robbed me of that.”