Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (21 page)

Remus wasn’t blind to the vampire’s blight.
He saw past the concern in his eyes. He saw the shame burrowed deep
down in what remained of this vampire’s tortured soul.

“I give you pardon for past transgressions
against kindred law,” he said. “Tell me what you happened this
evening… and know that you tell it with impunity.”

The man in black heard what the young vampire
had to proclaim. The town turned on them, faster than he expected.
He always knew the day would come. When the lady in red departed
this world so, too, did her ties with the esteemed city of Salem.
Now he would find out firsthand where it was about to go. There
were questions still unknown to him, but he knew better than most
that, in this place, answers came few and far between.

His crown was getting heavier.

Chapter Thirty Five

Night Kings: Sisters of Salem

Gregory Blackman

The Spirits Within

Elsa Dukane would have guessed it midday when
Gemma and she left the realm of the witches, but when they exited
the unseen pillar it was the moon that’d come out to greet them.
The darkness still lingered in these woods. It would’ve been
foolish to think otherwise, and yet, Elsa found it hard to
reconcile the differences between their world and hers.

“The full moon is nearly upon us,” Gemma
noted as she looked up to night sky. “In only a few days time the
werewolves will be unable to control themselves. In the years prior
Bernhard would lead them west to the mountains. There it was only
the goats and bears that had cause to worry.”

“And now?”

“Now I don’t know what the wolves will do,”
Gemma said. “The high priestess believes that the mother of the
pack won’t be able to control them for much longer. With Lukas
missing it’s only a matter of time until one from the warrior caste
seizes control. Then all bets are off the table.”

They walked the long walk back to Salem under
the cover of night. It would take the two of them hours to reach
home. Gemma’s mother was gone and Elsa’s was swept up in problems.
Their absence would go unnoticed by all—all but the two young women
caught in the middle of a war neither fully understood.

Elsa wanted to understand, but it proved a
tall task for someone who didn’t understand herself. She listened
to the high priestess speak of their past, their misgivings, and
their hopes for the future. She wanted to believe there was a
future out there for her, but the closer she came to the truth of
her nature, the further a normal life seemed to get.

“What’s Charleston like?” Elsa asked. “Cetra
mentioned your sister city. I thought you could tell me a little
more about it.”

“Charleston… is,” Gemma paused to best put it
into words, “a city like any other.”

Unfortunately, Gemma’s best was still
cryptic.

“You know what I mean,” Elsa said.

“That
is
what you mean,” responded
Gemma, sternly. “Unlike in Salem the sisterhood in operates against
the grain. They’ve forged no alliances, revealed themselves to none
of the city officials. Nor did they need to. The temple once built
to harness the strength of the goddess is still intact. Because of
that strength the vampires and werewolves hold little sway in that
town.”

“It sounds a lot better than here.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Gemma said as they
passed down into the vale that’d lead them to the pillar. “Because
of the latent power within their temple walls, other monsters, ones
more powerful than you could imagine, come in search of the power
the sisters’ harnessed. We believe it’s them who came for
Charleston, but we cannot be sure. The rest of the sisters have
determined to stay within the goddess’ realm until the threat
reveals itself.”

“You mean, worse than vampires and
werewolves?”

“Vampires and werewolves ascended from the
bowels of Hell,” Gemma tried to explain. “While the ones we know
now weren’t born in such a place, their ancestors were. They were
forced into a life of servitude and slavery, unleashed upon the
world to tear it asunder. All before the real menace arrived.”

“The real menace?”

Gemma couldn’t have put it in more ominous
words for the addled Elsa Dukane. She had enough to worry over
these last few days. Could these forces be the ones behind the
darkness that spread? No, she reasoned. The Sisters of Salem would
be the first to know.

“Demons,” said Gemma, flatly, “Charleston is
infested with demons and I fear they might’ve finally overwhelmed
our sisters to the south.”

As sudden as the topic began it was finished.
Elsa could see how the words, the images they conjured up, pained
Gemma as it would any of her kind. They were a close-knit people.
They had to be to survive the modern world.

How would she survive? That was the question
that swirled around in the furthest reaches of Elsa’s mind. She
decided not to press the subject and followed close behind as they
descended from the vale’s southern reaches.

Elsa was lost in a murky sea that threatened
to swallow her whole every time she tried wade above the waters.
She knew neither her past nor her future. After these last few days
not even her present was known to her. She needed to find herself.
Needed to know where she belonged.

“So, this goddess of yours,” stammered Elsa,
unsure of the ground she stood. “Is she really a god?”

“She is,” Gemma answered.

“Like a
real
god?” Elsa pried even
further. “I’ve never been a religious person, but doesn’t the
existence of one disprove all those that come after?”

“Gods and goddesses exist in the world and
they have since mankind first emerged from the caves,” Gemma said.
“They desired power and the humans gave it to them in the form of
worship. It doesn’t make them gods, but it doesn’t make them any
less godly. Countless wars have been fought in their name; wars
that rage on to this very day. All of them lay claim to our world.
Yet, none come from it.”

“And what does
that
mean?”

Gemma halted her descent and stopped to gaze
up into the night sky. “There are many stars in the sky. More than
one could count in a lifetime and most invisible to the naked eye.
This world stands unique amongst most every other world in the
galaxy. It was born without divine power. Divine power found
it.”

“Some came of virtuous accord,” she continued
with a hint of sadness in her voice, “others of a more sinister
nature. One has even found a direct gateway to this world. A tunnel
from their world to ours that can be accessed by any that dare make
the voyage.”

“You mean,” Elsa said with a lump in her
throat, “the Hell Gate.”

“I do.” Gemma shook her head solemnly and
resumed their long voyage back home. “The pillars are a small tear
in the fabric of space and time, a portal to another dimension. In
this dimension the goddess reigns supreme, and in another, the moon
gods. There is an infinite arrangement of beliefs, one by one
finding this world as they discover it.”

“Many of them have such portals into this
world,” Gemma continued. “Whether it is high in the sky, such as
how the angels enter this world, or from down below, as do the
archdemons of the twelve circles. Anything that descends the gate
goes to Hell. Anything that ascends goes to Earth. It is how races
such as vampires and werewolves broke free from their eternal
prison.”

More questions to fuel Elsa’s desire to learn
the truth, of herself, of her surroundings, and of the implications
it all meant. Would she be a nonentity in this fight to save her
home? Would she be savior when it was all said and done? Both could
easily be true. Still, there was every possibility of her being the
villain.

“What should I worship?” she asked earnestly.
“I was baptized, but that might have been the last time I was in a
church. I can’t imagine Catholicism covers… whatever the heck I
am.”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” asked Gemma
with a crook in her brow. “At a young age we define ourselves by
what we were meant to be. Whether you’re born in Egypt to parents
of Coptic Christianity or to a family of the Confucian faith in
Manchu it makes no difference. Those that believe lend their power
to something greater than themselves. They don’t speak for the
universe or the secrets it reveals and those that do are lying to
themselves as much as they are their followers. We were not meant
to know. They were not meant to know.”

“You’ll find your way, Elsa,” said Gemma, as
if she just realized the impact of her words on the fractured young
woman. “I promise to be there for you when the time comes to learn
the truth. You won’t go through this alone.”

Elsa gave a stiff nod in response, too swept
up to put her thoughts into words. Her heart fluttered a mile a
minute, threatened to bust out of her chest, or so she believed on
several occasions this night.

When Elsa raised her head she found the
darkness gone and the flush forests of green returned. So was no
longer in the valley they’d walked for over an hour, Gemma nowhere
by her side, but she wasn’t worried. Not in the least. She felt at
peace in this place, as if there was no cause for concern.

A rustling in the bushes grabbed her
attention and she found herself moving towards it at a frantic
pace.

“Who goes there?” she asked.

She appeared to have no control over her
movements or the words that left her mouth. Not that she seemed to
care. She was confident in this place, sure that wherever she was
it was a place she was meant to be.

With a throaty growl from the brushes Elsa
was snapped from her otherworldly trance, forced back into proper
state of mind. The specter of a werewolf emerged from those bushes.
He was constructed from tiny stands of light spun together, beady
white-hot eyes trained on her, eyes no different than her own.

With regained movement she stepped backwards,
away from the beast, but her actions only proved to spur the beast
on. It snarled at her, and with the snap of its jaws, erupted into
full blown sprint.

Elsa turned from the werewolf with hopes of
escape, but when she did it was already too late and she was caught
unable to defend herself. Only this wasn’t the shimmering white
wolf that caught up with her. It was the figure of a luminous bat,
built of the same white constructs as the werewolf, and it struck
her full bore.

She dropped to the ground; back in the real
world where a shaken Gemma Kohl was quick to wraps her arms around
her in support. Not that it would do her any use. There were no
prayers, no spells to bring her back from such an unconscious
state.

Gemma called out to the goddess for
assistance. She called for any sister that may be near. She even
called out to man in black. None answered her call. They were alone
out here without so much as a sign to know help would arrive.

After some time Gemma received her sign, but
it wasn’t from any of the sources she expected. The sleeper inside
Elsa awoke, eyes afire, and extremities as stiff as a board. As
much as she wanted to help her friend, the magnitude of power she
felt emanate from Elsa forced her to relinquish her friend’s
body.

Gemma backpedaled to a safe distance and
watched, in horror, as Elsa lay on the ground with her head turned
towards the young witch.

“Blood turns to fire turns to ash,” a haunted
Elsa said with eyes locked on Gemma Kohl. “The Sunkeeper has been
tainted.”

Chapter Thirty Six

Night Kings: Sisters of Salem

Gregory Blackman

Haunting Shadows

A turned Lukas made his way up the coast with
neither snack nor rest to aid him in his travels. He ran unopposed
in North Carolina towards the low capped mountains of Virginia that
stretched throughout the night; mountains that concealed him from
human eyes and made his long stretch home a smidgeon easier.

At this pace the full moon would be upon him
by the time he reached Salem. He would be no use to them at that
point. The best he could hope was to take action against those that
meant his friends harm. That was the true monster inside, the beast
Lukas couldn’t control, the one with no ties to the mortal
realm.

While their beginnings were forged in the
pits of Hell, the werewolves gave credit to gods not yet seen by
man for release from their hellish origins. The moon gods; and his
people believed it was these gods, not the ones below, which
possessed them each full moon. A small sacrifice, many would say,
for all the gifts bestowed upon them.

Lukas couldn’t hate the true beast for he
knew the truth behind the beast. In the days that led to the moon’s
ascent there was a merger of minds between man and wolf. Whether
the beast was a wounded soul from this life or the next Lukas could
not know. What he did know was the anguish in the beast’s heart. He
was trapped, frightened, and nowhere he could run would be far
enough to escape the confines of the moon’s hold.

Beyond the anxiety and rage that merger saw
the monster and the man align their goals and see that both paths
were vested in the same interests. If one of them were to fall so
would the other.

It was the monster that would return to
Salem. He wouldn’t apologize. He wouldn’t back down. Lukas would
take what belonged to him by birthright and he wouldn’t stop until
all his enemies lay slain.

It was in the Virginian Mountains that Lukas
was seen by one he hadn’t prepared to face. Not in this life. His
unseen observer watched for miles atop the mountains until Lukas
passed into the sheltered forests; away from watchful eyes.

The misty forests of Virginia were unknown to
Lukas. There was no taint to these woods, these rivers, or knotted
vales. They were untouched by man and in many ways more a home for
him than the now darkened landscape of Salem.