Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (28 page)

“These reapers,” said Hans, the disdain in
his voice resonating throughout every word he spoke, “they’re
abominations of nature. Hodgepodge human warriors of so-called
superior genetic potential
, grafted with the souls of dead
men and women. It’s perverse and only shows that the humans lack
the strength and conviction to fight the monsters in the
light.”

“Is that were you bring the fight?” Victor
asked with his hands balled up in anger. “I see nothing but
darkness out my front window. I
know
what you’re doing to
the land. What I lack is the logic that could bring a man to
destroy the city he helped build.”

Hans’ contempt for Victor and his fabricated
love for these humans was transparent. From this contempt arose a
hearty rumble from the pit of his bowels that bellowed throughout
the family room of the Dukane home.

“You keep referring to Salem as if it’s the
prize here,” Hans said as he returned to his place in front of the
mayor.

There was an idiosyncratic glimmer in his
eye, as though Hans was privy to information Victor lacked. Hans
drew closer to get a better look at the man he once respected a
great deal. That man no longer stood before Hans. Now Victor stood
no different than the monsters he sought to exterminate.

“All these years,” said Hans Brackhaus, “and
I never saw it until tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

Hans pressed his index finger into the head
of Victor Dukane. His nail dug into his flesh until blood was
drawn, but still the unfazed mayor took it in stride. “It’s one
thing to fail our associates, another to subvert their
operation.”

“I don’t know
what
you are, Mr. Mayor.
Don’t think you’re liable to tell me much, either,” said Hans as he
pushed hard as he could until Victor backed down from his place,
“but another has the information I desire…”

“She isn’t part of this!” the mayor shouted.
His hands swelled with rage that fired upward throughout his body,
from one extremity to the next, until Victor’s whole body shook
uncontrollably. He stepped forward, back into place, and dared the
dark robed councilor to draw more of his blood.

He never wanted his daughter involved in this
dark world of his. When she was born human he breathed a sigh of
relief, for that meant she would never truly know his sorrows.
Elsa’s mother discovered those sorrows for herself and it drove her
to the darkest path of all.

Laura Dukane believed she gave birth to a
demon child, a monster, which would bring untold horrors upon the
world which she lived. Victor tried to reason with Laura, convince
her that had Elsa been different it would’ve been apparent at
birth, that there’s never before been a half-breed of their kind.
None of that mattered to a woman that believed the antichrist had
born from her belly.

He feared that if his daughter joined the
ranks of the learned the same fate would befall her. Now it
appeared that decision would be made for him.

“Oh, she didn’t tell you?” Hans asked. “It
appears that beloved daughter shares daddy’s secret. She must not
have trusted you enough with the truth. It’s such a pity when
families collapse, is it not?”

Victor Dukane could stomach the insults. He
could take the coercion and the strong-armed tactics. What he
couldn’t stand any longer were the threats to his daughter’s
livelihood. He’d gone to great lengths to protect her, keep her
from the truth that drove their family to the brink, but those
times were behind them both.

“Do
not
threaten my daughter again,”
said Victor, brazenly. “Bad things happen to those that do.”

The shake of Victor’s hands transferred from
his body to the floorboards beneath. The unbridled, raw energy
passed to the walls, the ceilings, and then to the home’s
foundation. All the while Hans Brackhaus looked on with dumbfounded
smile pressed into his face.

All of a sudden, when it appeared the entire
house would come down around them, the tremors stopped and the home
settled back into place. This short-lived peace of theirs proved to
be just that, fleeted, and soon all out war was declared between
the oldest of friends. Victor’s eyes burst with flames of white
that crackled and spit forth in the councilor’s direction, but
still Hans kept his composure in the face of this unknown
presence.

“Goodbye,
brother
,” said Victor Dukane
as cracks of light emanated from inside his balled up fists. “I
hardly knew you.”

Victor moved to release the energy within his
hands, but found the ability to do so beyond his grasp. He looked
down to fists that wouldn’t budge an inch, and feet no different
than his arms.

As Victor’s gaze of white returned to Hans
Brackhaus he found the family room was filled with others dressed
in the same black robes. These men wore hoods to shroud their
faces, but through eyes that could see all, their faces couldn’t be
more transparent. These were the others Hans mentioned. They came
at last.

Victor was struck in the back of the head,
and as he phased from this reality to the next, he tried once more
to strike with his light. Even as he fell to the floor below,
Victor found his hands frozen in place, his moment to strike lost
to him forever.

It was too late for the aged Victor Dukane.
He wasn’t there for his daughter when she needed him. Now he never
would. She would be forever lost to the world, unaware of what the
truth behind the light and the gifts it could bestow.

He failed his daughter. He failed everyone in
Salem. The darkness came and it devoured him whole.

Chapter Forty Eight

Night Kings: Darkest of Depths

Gregory Blackman

Catch and Release

The forceful impact a duality of spirits
could have over a person wasn’t lost of Elsa Dukane. She knew too
well what kind of damage a foreign spirit could wreck upon one’s
psyche. She’d never felt more unsure of herself, more vulnerable,
and the harder she tried to figure herself out the less of a grasp
she seemed to have on the truth.

She could see that same struggle in Lukas’
eyes, and in his heart. He was tearing himself apart, piece by
piece, both of the flesh and of the mind.

“Tell me what’s happening,” Elsa said to ease
his burdens. “Tell me what the hell’s going on with you?”

“I can’t,” Lukas cried atop the crack of his
bones. “We don’t have any time… Ah!”

He attempted to delay the process, and to
considerable pains, she couldn’t help but note. He grimaced and
contorted on the floor, but still Elsa pressed him for information
and reached out for support. Anything she could do to keep his mind
here with them.

“You’re going to argue against,” she said,
“I’m going to come back with a reason for, and this is going to
continue until I’m having this discussion with a furry, little
animal.”

“You’ll find I’m not that little, Elsa
Dukane,” said the inner werewolf with eyes bursting with an amber
aura. Lukas shook off the beast inside, but both of them knew he
would be back sooner or later.

“You n-need to get back to the hatch,”
stammered Lukas, his eyes returned to their natural hazel. “There’s
a chance you’ll be safe over there.”

“You’re wasting time,” Elsa said.

Lukas clutched his ribs and growled in
torment. He would’ve thrown himself against the walls in a fit of
rage had it not been for the iron chains that held him in place.
“Where do I start?”

“I think you just answered that question,”
she said, sly grin on her face. “The start sounds as good a place
as any.”

“There’s no time.”

He howled in agony as his wrists snapped, and
snapped again, in a desperate attempt to free himself from the iron
shackles.

“There’s always time,” Elsa said in attempt
to delay the inevitable. She wanted to help him, be there in his
time of need, but there was no salvation to be had anymore. In this
moment she understood what it must have been like to look into her
eyes the night of the farm. Somewhere in their conversation Lukas
had slipped away into the night. He was no longer tethered to this
world.

At last the gravity of the situation had sunk
in for Elsa Dukane. There were no more quips, no more quibbles out
of her mouth. Lukas was lost to her. Maybe it’d been that way from
the start of their relationship. Since they were snot nosed brats
the ties between Lukas and Elsa ran thicker than water. She
couldn’t place her feelings for him. Not before her world had been
turned upside down. How was she to place those feelings
afterwards?

It all became awash in a myriad of responses
and emotions. Up was left and black was a thousand shades of
varying evil. One of those shades stood on all fours before her
right now, covered in the blood and bile of his former skin.

“No more time,” the wolf grunted, in chains
with his back to Elsa Dukane. “Not for us.”

The beast spoke in short, precise sentences.
Elsa wasn’t sure if it was because the syllables were too complex
or that the language of humans disgusted the inner werewolf. She
quickly found out the truth when the fully turned werewolf turned
to meet her gaze.

“I can’t,” growled Lukas underneath the
werewolf’s control. He was fraught with guilt, but unable to do
anything about it. The inner werewolf had him tonight. That’s the
way it’d always been and the way it would remain if the moon gods
had their way. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t fight the beast at every
turn. He lunged towards the woman he loved, all the same.

Elsa didn’t flinch in the face of Lukas’ true
monster. She submerged to the darkest of depths where her other
dwelled. When the werewolf came at her, she was there to greet him
with eyes of white fury.

She braced for an attack that never came.
With the cock of her head sideways she looked at the werewolf now
dead in his tracks. Half of her wanted to destroy the potential
enemy before her and the other half of her wanted to save him; a
duality of spirits that wrecked havoc for both sides.

The fight was far from over, but for now
Lukas Wendish had won the battle over his beast of burden. He
wasn’t sure how he’d managed such a feat, something never before
heard of among their kind.

It was the archdemons of the nine circles
that found and enslaved them on some distant world, but it was the
moon gods that freed them and gave them back their humanity. That
salvation came with a price, one that was being paid tonight. Or at
least, that’s how things should’ve been. Whether it was through the
warrior of light, himself, or the conflicted emotions that tugged
on every fiber of his being, Lukas denied those gods their right
and suppressed his inner monster.

“The dark one will soon come back,” Lukas
growled before he dug his teeth into the iron shackles that chained
him to the wall. “What now?”

“There’s only one thing left to do,” Elsa
said. At this moment the interests of Elsa and her other spirit
were aligned. She raised her hand in the direction of his chains,
and with a flick of her fingers, four strands of white light struck
the chains where they were bound. “We fight back.”

The steel hatch bent and buckled under the
duress brought on by the serrated claws of Lukas Wendish now put to
purpose. He tore into the hatch with a deep seeded resentment of
the mistreatments he’d been put through; but it was more than that,
it was the mistreatments he’d put his pack through.

He could only imagine what the silver-haired
matriarch of the Wendish clan would have to do to keep the pack
strong. Alliances would be tested, if they already hadn’t been, and
soon the pack would be on the hunt. If they hadn’t yet left for the
mountains this town would be in grave danger. Danger only he could
avert.

After the steel hatch came the next door and
the one after that. Whatever it took Elsa and he to reach the
ground floor. They passed by dozens of sealed tombs covered in a
thick coat of dust. All of them were marked by the passage of time,
as if not a soul, save the three of them, had been here for quite
some time.

A frenzied Lukas emerged from the mausoleum
with Elsa hot on his trail. They raced through the remote cemetery
with eyes not on revenge, but on the emancipation of their homeland
from dark forces yet to reveal themselves. They had only a sniff of
their city to guide, and while a werewolf’s senses are second to
none on the full moon, it was only a matter of time until the inner
wolf tried to emerge once more.

Not even the lady in red and her dark
princess could have predicted what would transpire here tonight.
That didn’t make it anymore delightful to witness. As she watched
them dart through a field of tombstones an impish grin stretched
across her powdered face. Both Lukas Wendish and his female
companion were unknown variables, misrepresentations in the natural
order. Now they would learn to work for her.

“My queen was right about you,” she whispered
into the wind. “We’re going to change the world… yes we are.”

Chapter Forty Nine

Night Kings: Darkest of Depths

Gregory Blackman

Here at Last

The mountains west of Salem had been quiet
for too long. They remained impartial throughout the ages while
battle upon battle had been fought in their name.

The secrets contained within those mountains
were older than the town itself, older than the country that
claimed it. Few of the conquering hordes ever knew the reasons why
they fought over such a small tract of land. Yet, they did so all
the same.

No more would those mountains remain neutral
in the war for Salem. Those that had taken root in the goddess’
temple now felt the time was right to leave their sacred
grounds.

Down the mountain path these men walked
towards the unsuspecting city. They were dressed in black robes,
all of them, and in each of their hands rested a torch that
illuminated all but their concealed faces and a sword that
glistened in the fires beside. These were men on a mission, a dark
mission; one that had interests vested in the very origins of
Salem.