Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (29 page)

When the dark figures made it down the
mountain top they were joined by others from all sides. The others
were of similar garb, similar mind, and as these men met at the
mountain’s base they all turned towards the city of Salem.

Hundreds of men descended upon the city with
hundreds of torches and hundreds of swords. Not a human soul in
Salem could know, not truly, of the darkness that loomed on the
horizon and they wouldn’t learn until the fires were already upon
them. Then it would be too late for them all.

Chapter Fifty

Night Kings: Old World Cull

Gregory Blackman

A Moment All Too Brief

To say that Salem had seen hard times over
the centuries would be to say nothing at all about the city’s
storied legacy. Its citizens, be they supernatural or not, had
known loss, bigotry, and persecution in considerable doses over the
years. Now they would all know damnation onset by those
supernaturals rooted in their community.

Elsa Dukane lived for nearly twenty years of
her life without knowing of the dangers that lurked outside her
home, or the ones that lurked within. Now that her guiding white
light shone on the dark and mysterious, Elsa’s life swirled around
precariously amid a torrent of enlightenment. She learned of truths
no human should ever have to know. Only she wasn’t human. She was
the unknown girl surrounded by monsters of all shapes and
sizes.

Elsa and her werewolf companion ran for miles
from the crypt that housed them. Or rather, Lukas ran and she did
her best to keep pace. He was no more the beast on four legs. It
was his human body Lukas clung to in his hour of need.

Not once in the history of the werewolf race
had one of their ranks turned against the moon gods. For werewolves
it was a cardinal sin to refuse the bloodlust onset by the full
moon. It was another thing entirely to keep the wolf at bay. That’s
what he did now, in his human skin, and he did it with all the
powers the gods bestowed.

The closer they drew to Salem, the more
pungent the air became. Smoke clouded the air they breathed, slowly
began to choke them, mile by mile until they were forced to head
east. They didn’t know of the men that’d come to Salem, nor did
they know of their reasons. All Lukas Wendish and the unknown girl
knew was that in this city there were loved ones in need.

“An unpleasant stench,” Lukas said with his
nose wrinkled in displeasure, “to go with an unpleasant night.”

“Armageddon…”

Lukas stopped his brisk pace and turned back
to Elsa. “What did you say?”

“You could call me non believer these days,”
she replied, in remembrance of her conversation with Gemma, “but
the description would seem to ring true. Gods be damned, what we’ve
got here is Salem’s day of reckoning.”

“What are you talking about?” Lukas asked. He
stormed over to her and placed his hands roughly on her shoulders.
It wasn’t anger that moved him, it was fear and the concern he had
for friend and pack alike. “We’re talking about werewolves on the
hunt. I can stop this before it gets out of hand. I can save
everyone.”

Lukas didn’t know. Since the lady in red fell
Lukas has been absent. Not from just his pack, but the friends he’d
made over the years. It was easy for Elsa to forget how much had
changed over the last few weeks. How much she changed along with
it. She was no more the foolish girl that waited in a red line for
her best friend to notice her. Elsa wasn’t sure what she was
anymore, but she was damn sure what she wasn’t anymore, and she
wasn’t powerless. She possessed the inner strength to fight back
where others couldn’t. If monsters had come to their town for war
then she would be there to block their path, every step of the
way.

“If a person’s life is said to happen too
fast to truly appreciate it,” asked Elsa, “what can be said of the
supernatural one?”

“What does
that
mean?” Lukas balked.
“For years now, Gemma’s held information over my head at every
available opportunity. Now I have to worry about you, too?”

“The darkness came while we were swept up in
the vampire’s queen shit.” Elsa looked down to the ground when she
realized that the lady in red’s forceful hand still lingered
heavily on her friend. “Only it never left when the lady in red
fell.”

“What are you talking about?” Lukas asked.
“She was the source of it all.”

“Yeah,” said Elsa, “that’s what we thought,
too, but it hasn’t stopped spreading. We found a temple, Gem and I.
The sisters say it was built by Vikings during the early middle
ages. Gemma thinks that temple is the source of the darkness.”

In a fit of rage, Lukas let the moon god out
for the briefest of moments and violently pushed Elsa away. He took
a swipe out of a nearby tree to release that anger, but it served
to further his descent into madness. He’d failed his father, failed
his pack, and now he’d failed everyone in the city of Salem. This
fight suddenly became larger than he could handle.

“The smoke is getting thicker,” Elsa
noted.

“It’s not the smoke or the flames that worry
me,” Lukas growled with his nose raised to the sky. “We’re not
alone in these woods.”

“Are you sure?”

Elsa used the senses given by her other and
reached out into the black. Despite those senses, not one of them
came in use. The smoke choked her off from the world and limited
what she could pick up both near and far, and no matter how hard
Elsa tried, her best wasn’t enough to pierce the hazy barrier.

“Unfortunately,” he answered.

Lukas didn’t have the same difficulties and
used his senses to penetrate the many layers of smoke. Under the
full moon a werewolf’s senses were second to no creature on this
world. Those senses warned of many dangers on their smoky horizon;
dangers that were getting closer.

“It’s not safe,” Lukas said with eyes to the
southwest. “You need to get out of here.”

“The hell I do,” Elsa fired back. “I’m not
that absentminded girl you abandoned on the steps of your
farmhouse. You know, a lot’s happened since you left us in the
lurch.”

Her steely gaze met his, and in spite of her
best attempts, broke under the pressure of a backlog of emotion.
She wanted to tell him, right then and there, what he meant to her
and what he’d always meant. Yet, when it came time to pull the
trigger, she didn’t say a word to the lanky blonde with concerned
eyes.

“I-I didn’t mean,” she stammered. “You had
every right to leave. Not like I haven’t thought of it a million
times before.”

“You don’t get it,” Lukas said hastily. “I
can’t protect you when they get here. You might have the strength
to topple mountains and the ability to soar into the clouds up high
in the sky. But you’re still flesh and blood and that means these
beasts won’t stop until your blood and guts are laid out before
you.”

“Then at least my supernatural life will have
meant something,” said a stone-faced Elsa Dukane. “What do you
expect me to do? Do you know how sick I am of being caged up? If
it’s not my father it’s a goddamn sociopath! I’ve had it up to
here
with people that want to do me harm. So whoever’s out
there can bring it the hell on!”

She wanted to break down in his arms, but
held true to keep her head above the rising storm. They needed to
be strong in the face of the dangers that came. Anything less could
mean for devastating results down the road. Elsa wouldn’t stand for
that. Not even if it meant the suppression of everything she needed
to tell him.

“You need to find Gem,” Lukas said with a
hushed voice. “The witches have to know something about this, El,
they’ve just got to. I don’t know where they are, but something
tells me that you do. You keep the city standing and I’ll make sure
they’re people left alive to reside there.”

A single tear streamed down the face of Elsa
Dukane, only this tear wasn’t for Lukas or her father. She wanted
to bare her soul to the world, and she wanted it to start with the
man before her. Where would she begin? What could she tell?

Elsa had nothing tangible, nothing with a
shred of merit. Only the light that came and went as it pleased
throughout her body. When they were home, safe and sound, she would
confess her emotions. Not a moment sooner. At least that was
something she could control.

“They’re your people, Lukas,” said Elsa,
unsteadily. “They don’t know what they’re doing. What are you going
to do to them?”

Lukas turned from Elsa and stared off into
the smoky forests to the west. With his back to her, he said, “You
don’t want to know.”

Elsa wasn’t sure of why she waited in
silence, but she waited, nonetheless. There was nothing she could
say, nothing she could do except let him go in the night. That was
the life of a monster in disguise. You rarely got to pick your
battles, and when you did, they never went according to the
plan.

Elsa didn’t watch Lukas leave. He had enough
problems without having to worry about what she brought to the
table. They would have their conversation, of that Elsa was
certain; even if it had to happen on the other side.

“One supernatural day at a time,” Elsa
whispered under her breath. “At this pace I’ll be lucky if I can
manage that.”

With a sullen shake of her head she put such
foolishness behind her and moved to keep ahead of the fires. She
raced among the trees at a frantic pace, desperate to keep ahead of
the fires that raged in the distance. When she reached the city
streets the cries from those in dire need caught her ear.

At first it was the hysterical laughter from
those that burned in the flames. Then the cries of agony of those
trampled under the weight of their common man. She saw some
citizens flee and others raise whatever weapons they could find in
defense of their homes. For many of the citizens the end result was
the same. They fell to the dark hordes that descended from the
mountains.

Clusters of people clogged the main streets
and forced Elsa to turn from her southern path. If she was going to
get to the sisters it would have to be through a different route.
That would mean more time away from the frontlines. More time for
her city to burn.

She had one last option before her. It wasn’t
the witches. It wasn’t the vampires. There was only one person in
which she could openly commune. Of course, Elsa never knew of the
true reasons she went back to that man. That wasn’t for her to
know. That privilege was for her other.

No matter how fast Elsa ran the sounds of
slaughter followed her on the streets. When she reached the upper
hills of her gated community, she turned back to survey the damage
wrought to her city.

The fires spread from the suburbs of the west
to the lower income slums of Lower Salem. Soon main street would be
engulfed in those fires and with it her father’s place of business.
There was something out of place, but she couldn’t rightly put her
finger on it. It was as though there was something other than the
fires and the hordes of invaders. This was something missing, not
adding fuel to the fire.

When Elsa returned to her home the front door
was ajar and her father nowhere to be found inside. She was at her
wits end, afraid she’d made the wrong decision to leave Lukas’
side. In her frustration she stumbled out the back door and into
the forests behind her home.

She had more than a few choice expletives
lined up as she charged through the trees with no end in sight.
There was nowhere else for her to turn, no plan to save the town,
and no endgame where time could be reversed and everyone could live
in blissful ignorance.

Elsa was struck with a shortness of breath
that saw her to crawl to a halt. Her head spun her every which way
but forward and soon she found gravity out to get her, as well.

“Don’t do this to me again,” she pleaded with
eyes of white fury. “Not now. Not while so much is on the
line…”

This time it wasn’t just her eyes. Her entire
body burst into flames. The fires forced Elsa to her hands and
knees in submission, where she lay in her own tormented hell. There
was nothing she could do to stop the warrior of light inside. At
this moment this body was every bit as much hers.

Through clenched teeth and rolling tears of
molten lava, Elsa dug her fiery hands into the dirt below, and
cried, “Father, why have you forsaken me?”

With those words Elsa passed from this world.
Where she went wasn’t a place for those that knew. It was a place
for the lost ones, the Elsa Dukane’s of the world, the ones that
wished to learn, and with a little luck, understand.

But first, she needed to survive the
trip.

Chapter Fifty One

Night Kings: Old World Cull

Gregory Blackman

City of Fire

Remus Castalon was a man known throughout the
kindred world for deeds both noble and immoral. Most of those deeds
fell under the latter and for that he was known as the infamous man
in black. Now, that infamy was nothing but a rouse, a blanket for
him to masquerade in. He hadn’t been that man, the executioner, for
a hundred years. Could he become that man again to save his people?
He shuddered at the thought.

Remus looked out from the same balcony he’d
stood many times. No matter the time of night it was a view that
rarely changed, rarely diverted from the vampire queen’s path. Now
he was the king and her once mighty kingdom lay in ruin.

Specks of amber seeped from the forests into
the suburbs. The light spread forth through the populace that moved
towards it, and even the populace that ran. Everyone caught in the
horde’s path met the same fate in the end. He could have descended
his lofty heights and joined the ranks of those that clogged the
streets, but there he stood, motionless and reluctant to share in
the battle.