Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (24 page)

With their conversation, ended all parties
departed Blackrose Manor. Corina went continue the secret orders
she’d been given. The unwilling Akil moved to follow. And Remus
left to skulk in the shadows he’d grown so accustomed. That left
only one to bear witness to the shift of power seen down below.

High atop one of the stone statues was the
raven that watched. Its beady black eyes were locked on the
courtyard below and not once during the meeting did they waver.

Blackrose Manor was a place the raven visited
often. There were secrets within these walls. More secrets that the
raven could hope to learn in one life. That didn’t keep the raven
from coming back time and time again.

No one ever saw the raven that soared high
above. No one knew why the raven watched, or why it waited, but
they would learn. Soon every monster in Salem would know the
raven’s name.

Chapter Forty

Night Kings: The Red River

Gregory Blackman

King Lore

“I can’t believe you went to him!” Gemma Kohl
shouted, banged, and kicked in Elsa’s direction. “Why wouldn’t you
tell me that?”

“I am now,” said Elsa halfheartedly, too
wrapped up in the forests around them to properly explain herself
or her actions.

“Yeah,” Gemma said, “after the fact. Why
would you do something that stupid?”

“He offered me something no one else could,”
Elsa said. “Don’t take it personally.”

“What could he offer you?” Gemma asked. “A
walk in the dark and then maybe, if you’re lucky, a bite on the
neck? And you tell me not to take it personally? What the hell were
you thinking on this one?”

They’d been in these woods for hours without
a hint they moved in the right direction. What Gemma sought could
be anywhere within a hundred square miles of here. Yet it bothered
Gemma little. She knew they traveled down the right path. The
unknown girl was there to guide her.

Elsa stopped dead in her tracks and turned
towards the only friend in this world she had left. She was so
caught up in the search that she lost sight of how her actions were
perceived. Elsa wasn’t even sure what Gemma and she were out here
to find. All she knew was that it was important to quell the
darkness in Salem. That’s what she was repeatedly told, at
least.

“It’s all right, Gem,” said Elsa with warm
eyes and a stiff upper lip. “The sisters showed me a light that can
survive even the darkest of depths. I needed to see a darkness that
couldn’t be quenched. You were born into your sisterhood. Where was
I born? To a mother that killed herself and a father that doesn’t
care about anything but his own ambitions. Where do I fall on your
spectrum of light? Am I one of white or one of black? I could be
freaking purple for all we know!”

Gemma understood all too well where her
friend came from. The sisterhood was a close-knit community,
regardless of how isolated, how spread apart they were; but many of
them there were not. Gemma would’ve been alone had it not been for
Elsa Dukane.

She was drawn to the young girl with hair
black as a raven’s feather. It was more than a connection of
spirits. They were meant to find one another. Gemma was almost
certain of it. All they need do now is find the Sunkeeper’s inner
sanctum to confirm her overwhelming suspicions.

She quieted down about her worries in hope
that the issue would resolve itself of its own accord. The man in
black would be dealt with in time. For now, she walked beside her
friend in body and in spirit while they searched for what Elsa
identified in a possessed state. In actuality, Gemma walked one
step behind so that her friend would lead her unimpeded in the
right direction.

Elsa swore to Gemma she couldn’t remember the
words she spoke while in a transient state. The Sunkeeper was an
ancient relic of their ancestors. The heart of their temple, as her
mother would often say, and the tool from which the goddess above
spoke to her. It would appear this chamber spoke through Elsa
Dukane. Would it guide her there, as well? Gemma could only
hope.

Elsa, and by extension Gemma, moved west to
the mountains. They left Salem behind and now found themselves on
the paths the Wendish werewolves took during their monthly descent
into madness.

“Wait,” Elsa said. She stopped abruptly on a
rocky ledge, no more than five feet wide, and moved to the
mountain’s edge. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Whistling,” Elsa answered.

“Someone’s coming?”

Gemma jumped in a full circle and traced the
rock-strewn path for any signs of movement. When none could be
found, she turned to Elsa with hands on her hips and disgruntled
look upon her face. “There’s no one here.”

“No,” said Elsa, “I mean the air.”

“Yeah,” said a cockeyed Gemma Kohl. “We’re a
fair distance above sea level. The wind whistles up here.”

“Not like this it doesn’t,” Elsa replied. She
moved to a patch of vines that grew atop the rocky incline. Her
hands wrapped around the thick vines and yanked on them until they
came down.

Elsa acted like she expected to see a stone
door behind these vines. Maybe she did. Gemma, on the other hand,
couldn’t have been more surprised by the secret passageway so
casually revealed to her.

“These,” whispered Gemma as her hands traced
the intricate carvings inscribed on the door, “… are of Norse
design. There! You see that? This here is Gylfi… and that’s Gefion
off to the side. I can see markings that depict Thor’s duel with
Hrungnir! Elsa, can you believe this?”

Elsa couldn’t. She wasn’t even sure what to
make of the hidden door, but she could see the interest it sparked
in her friend. Until now she hadn’t even known the reason for this
nighttime trek.

During Elsa’s visit with the sisters, the
high priestess spoke on the subject well into their eternal
daylight. The first Vikings that came to the New World set fire to
the monuments the natives had erected, but those that destroyed
also built upon what they’d so callously demolished. One colossal
structure atop the mountain was raised in their place. It was a
place of worship for the conquering horde, a place they could call
their own in this most foreign of lands. Little did they know it
was to the wrong gods they prayed.

Most of the goddess’ temple was destroyed in
the civil war when Union forces used it as a makeshift fort to halt
the advance of Confederate forces. The soldiers were all killed
when the old, decayed walls toppled around them. Only the lower
portions of the structure remained after that fateful night, but
there were none alive to speak of its secrets.

What remained was a temple the sisterhood
inherited. It wasn’t much to look at. In fact, once outside the
temple left no footprint on the world it surveyed. For the sisters
of old it was home; and for Gemma and the others sisters of the
modern age it was a child’s story of love and loss.

“This is it, El,” said Gemma as she looked up
at her friend with boundless optimism. “After all these years…
you’ve given us back our home. You found the Temple of the
Sunkeeper.”

“Wait,” said Elsa, her hands raised in
confusion, “I’ve found what now?”

Chapter Forty One

Night Kings: The Red River

Gregory Blackman

Blinded by the Light

Elsa had every right to be upset at the way
she was used by her close friend. There wasn’t a mention of the
words she spoke while in a trance; and not until the Sunkeeper’s
chamber was found did the young witch open up about what happened
the night before.

She wasn’t mad Gemma used her. She understood
the gravity of the situation. The truth was that Elsa Dukane wanted
to help in any capacity she could. She’d been used her whole life.
So what if she had to play the fool a few more hours?

Elsa’s inability to hold a grudge didn’t make
things easy for Gemma Kohl. She wanted to make things right with
her friend, but at the same time, she was preoccupied with the
discovery of a lifetime.

It was one of the few stories Gemma’s mother
had the time to tell her. Because of this she was enthralled with
the witches of old and the powers they wielded. Powers she hoped to
harness herself one day.

The door the two young women opened led to a
spiral staircase that seemed to descend the entire mountain. The
carvings Gemma identified on the door continued with them down the
lengthy decline; right down to the end of the line. All the Viking
gods were covered on these walls, in triumph and in failure,
hundreds upon hundreds of actions and reactions from the gods and
their eternal enemies.

“They must have worked tirelessly,” said
Gemma, her hand not once parted from every nook, every crevasse on
the stairwell. “I could spend a decade here and still I wouldn’t
uncover all the stories this place has to tell.”

At the end of the stairs another door barred
their path. It had the same carvings as the door on the face of the
mountain, no handle to grab hold of, and no way to sense what lay
on the other side. Once that door opened it wouldn’t be so easy to
close. Because of this, Gemma stood there for a few minutes and
contemplated what it may be on the other side. All the while her
trembled hand rested on the stone cold door.

Elsa didn’t have that issue and got tired of
the wait. She pressed her right shoulder against the stone door and
heaved with all her might. It slid slowly, and it slid loudly, but
in the end it, too, gave way to the unknown girl.

“I guess they don’t believe in locks,” Elsa
said, slyly. “It would’ve been a shame to have to go all the way
back.”

“Locks have never proved a problem for me,”
replied Gemma with a flash of guile in her yawning smile. “Besides,
who would’ve been foolish enough to steal from Vikings—?”

Gemma stopped dead in her tracks when she
passed into a world lost to time. The stories continued from floor
to ceiling across the entire room, but it didn’t stop there. On the
vaulted ceiling the Viking’s had carved the most elaborate of them
all, Odin the Wanderer, his watchful eyes atop the mountain’s
peak.

The room they found themselves in appeared to
be a central hall from which several adjacent rooms connected.
There were rows of stone slabs, each one parted in the middle to
allow passage to the pulpit at the end. While many of its columns,
balconies and shelves still stood upright, much of the debris from
the temple above had fallen to the ground below. It created gaps in
the Nordic wanderer above that allowed the moon’s light to cascade
down to floor below. Light that Gemma Kohl now basked in.

“Viking’s were known for many things in this
world,” Gemma said in astonishment. “Sculpting wasn’t one of those
them. Can you believe what they did here? A few thousand men put to
a purpose they couldn’t comprehend; simply amazing.”

She’d asked that several times now and each
time Elsa came up short. If this was what remained of the temple
she could only imagine the opulence of what once stood atop the
mountain.

“The Sunkeeper’s chamber must be up ahead,”
Gemma said. She pointed to the end of the hall where two more stone
doors, no different than the one they entered, lay in wait for
them. What was beyond was anyone’s guess. All they’d been told was
that the sun’s guiding light would be there to greet them. The icy
stone beckoned for her touch and Gemma moved forward only to be
pulled back by her levelheaded friend.

“What in the hell was that for?”

“Shh,” said Elsa with a finger pressed to her
lips. “I hear something.”

“Hear something?” an alarmed Gemma asked.
“What the hell are you talking about?”

Twice now the unknown girl heard what the
trained witch could not. While their kind wasn’t known to posses
the hearing of a vampire or werewolf, the sisterhood took comfort
that at least their senses extended past that of normal humans.
They used these gifts more than any other the goddess bestowed upon
them, for it allowed for the sisters to remain one step ahead of
persecution at every turn but one.

Elsa rushed them back to the doorway they’d
come from. She pushed Gemma past the threshold and once more put
her shoulder against the stone door. When the momentum swung in her
direction Elsa jumped to the other side and saw the door come
softly to a close. At least, it almost came to a close. Elsa left a
small crack in the door and pressed her cheeks up against the cold
stone to get a better vantage point.

Gemma, who hadn’t stopped arguing, felt
compelled to do the same and situated herself just below Elsa.

“…And you’re sure the seal is closed up?”
asked a masked individual, his raspy voice echoing throughout the
hall. He came around the corner with another, slightly shorter,
soldier with a similar balaclava on his head.

“It’s closed,” the other soldier answered
unsteadily. “I’m almost certain.”

It appeared to the two young women that the
taller soldier, the one first to speak, was the man in charge. He
turned around on his heel and looked down on his subordinate.

“We don’t want a repeat of last time,” he
said, sternly. “The damn thing only works when it opens at the
correct time. If these fuckers go
pop
we’ll have to start
all over. You’re on point if that happens.”

“Yeah, Julian,” his man said, “I’m sure I
closed it… sure enough, at least.”

“You better be,” said the commander known as
Julian, “Because we need their full power if we’re going to see the
town under our control.”

“Don’t want a repeat of last time?” the
soldier asked.

The commander turned to strike his comrade
with the back of his hand. “Shut your mouth and help the
others!”

The soldier ran back to the hallway with one
hand pressed against his head. He came back a short while later
with four other soldiers. In their custody were two vampires,
chained and beaten, dragged by their arms so the blood could seep
out of their bullet riddled bodies.