Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (34 page)

“Whatever it is you’re trying to tell me,
you’re going to have to speak up!” Elsa shouted with hands raised
in anger to the suns above. “Do you hear me?”

At the forefront of those emotions was fear
and love; fear of the darkness that came to her home, and love for
the one she had just discovered. Irritated by the feelings that
festered, Elsa and her other stormed through the blue grass and
trees of crimson, mindful of any more fissures. No matter how far
Elsa went it wouldn’t be far enough. Her feelings would always be
right there behind her. Whatever she’d felt for Lukas Wendish, they
were emotions that stirred within her long before their tender
moment on this night.

She had always known where Lukas stood in her
heart. He was second to none. Whatever her feelings were for the
young werewolf, they were clouded behind years of friendship. Those
feelings came to a head tonight, awoken for the first time after
all these years, but too late to see into fruition. Lukas was gone
from her side, and if she didn’t do something soon, he might never
be there again. She would wait, hope for the best while she
prepared for the worst. When the flames had cooled off Salem, Lukas
and she would have their moment together. In that she could only
hope.

“You mother fucker!” Elsa screamed at the top
of her lungs. “I hope you get fucked by a blind werewolf,
fuck!”

She cursed, and cursed some more at the
glistening suns that hung in the sky, and when she reached the next
fissure, she bent over to do the same on the other one. Her angry
wasn’t misplaced, it was thrown in every direction she could until
she received word from the one that kept her here.

“Watch,” said the breeze as it skirted around
her ears, “and understand.”

Elsa searched the forests of red behind her
for the voice that’d spoke through the wind. Not a soul could be
soon and soon Elsa had no once but to continue her journey
forward.

“Watch,” the voice repeated, “and you might
understand.”

Elsa didn’t know what the words meant, not
truly, but she was overcome with the sudden need to calm herself.
She’d been going off full steam for the latter part of an hour now
that it was bound to catch up to her eventually. She crept forward
until the weight of her own head became more than she could bear.
She surrendered to the place where her other dwelled, overcome with
a rush of emotion that forced her to the ground. She could hardly
keep her eyes open from the pressure that built from behind.

The pressure built until the bubble burst and
forced the white light to the surface. Unlike all the times she was
locked inside while the other reigned supreme, this time it was
Elsa that held dominion over the ancient spirit.

“This must be what the other monsters feel,”
Elsa said. She referred to herself as one of the other monsters. It
was a monumental moment of the young woman, but for one reason more
than any other. This time she didn’t flinch at the word or the
haunted imagery it brought to the surface.

She used this newfound strength to rise to
her feet and take control of her environment. She felt lighter,
spry, and able to overcome any obstacle in her path. After all the
events that led to this moment, she felt like nothing in the human
world could stop her. Maybe nothing in her world
could
stop
her, but here, on this world her inert prowess was an entirely
different matter.

The twin suns became brighter until it caught
the attention of the girl with eyes on fire. She looked up into sky
to where the second sun hung below its larger brother. It ballooned
in size over the next few minutes until the heat on the surface
rose well past bearable temperatures.

Elsa Dukane was set afire along with the
trees that towered and the grass that sunk into the world below.
She survived long enough to see the younger sun explode, and with
it its older brother, all before everything in this world came to a
fiery end.

Elsa opened her eyes to the world she left
behind, the human world, now more foreign to her than ever. She was
agitated by the sights she’d witnessed, not entirely sure of the
meaning, but clear on the intention. This was her warning. Elsa
needed to change the path she was on or risk the same fiery fate
for herself. While she didn’t quite trust her other half, Elsa and
her other came to an understanding in the forests behind her empty
home. The time to change the world around them was at hand.

When she rose to her feet, Elsa found that
she wasn’t alone in these woods. There were many, and they’d
already had time to surround her. These were the Sisters of Salem
and they had returned to take action against their oldest of
adversaries.

No more were the witches hidden away behind
their hoods. Their faces were revealed for the first time. In their
faces Elsa saw her baker, one of the tellers at her local bank, and
even her fifth grade teacher. Elsa spoke to these women on many
occasions and not once did she ever think of them as anything more
than they appeared.

That’s the way the sisters had been since the
days of the Salem witch trials. It kept them alive, but that safety
came at a grave cost to all those in the inner sanctum. They were
near blind to the world around them.

In front of the other witches stood Gemma
Kohl, joined by the high priestess, Cetra Altaras. She moved with
tantric rhyme, as though she was connected to a naturist force
beyond control, and circled around Elsa with the shakes of her hips
and quiver of her arms.

Cetra was suddenly struck with a moment of
lucidity and straightened up as stiff as a board. She looked Elsa
dead in the eyes, and said, “It’s time.”

Elsa tried to open her mouth in response, but
it was her other that answered. “So the witches act at last. Tell
me, ladies of the earth, what can your kind do differently this
time? From what I hear there were a lot more of you back then.”

“We do what we must,” Gemma answered for the
rest of her coven. “We finish what our goddess started. We kill the
bloody lot of them, and this time we end the bloodline.”

Chapter Fifty Five

Night Kings: Old World Cull

Gregory Blackman

For the King

Lukas Wendish led the frenzied wolves over
the hills of Salem. They headed for the swirled mass of black on
the horizon. There, the werewolves were promised retribution. Allow
the sinners one last battle to see if their gods deemed them worthy
of repentance. And with so many gods in the fight, he thought,
surely the odds would sway in their favor at some point in the
night.

He knew the unfortunate truth. They wouldn’t
come home on this night or any other night. Theirs weren’t the gods
that answered.

On this long, fateful run towards their
enemy, Lukas couldn’t help but think back to the stories his father
would tell. The gods were never Bernhard’s favorite subject to
broach, but those times he did, Lukas was there to scamper to his
feet.

Supernatural lore wasn’t much different from
the history of man. They shared the same map and spoke of the same
historical figures, but their pieces on the board differed. Where
man told of armies and their victories over the barbarian hordes of
other nations, the supernatural races had their gods and mystics
that ushered their human armies across the board in their name.

When the Zoroastrians and the Persians came
to Greece it wasn’t just their hoplites and their triremes that
they faced. The Greeks had mighty gods in the Olympians and they
hacked away at the forces of their pagan neighbors, toppled their
gods and went back to work on their followers.

The Olympians found the world within their
grasp. They conquered the lands of their invaders to the east and
drove the kemetic gods of Egypt out from the lands in the south.
That notoriety came at a price, as the Olympians would soon find.
The gods that feared extermination—most notably the Slavic and
Norse deities—banded together and moved to strike the Olympians
where they slept.

The Greeks below never knew what happened,
and when Alexander the Great asked ‘why’ of his gods, they were
nowhere to be found. They were lost to the world, much like the
Greeks that once worshipped them.

In time the Olympians and their followers
would have their revenge. Centuries later, angels of light cascaded
to the land below and let up their holdings with a terrible fire
that lasted nearly a decade. When the fires were finally doused,
the men, women and children there found armies of steel soldiers at
their doorstep to finish what the fires failed to cleanse.

It was the Christians, their orders and their
armies, and as his father would always say, “they don’t fuck
around. Not then. Not now.”

Some in his father’s pack would often share
of their fears that the same would happen to the moon gods one day.
What if there weren’t enough wolves out there to support them? What
if there were too many? Despite their fears, every full moon the
moon gods came back to torment them.

Bernhard was convinced they weren’t gods at
all, but instead extraterrestrial entities of varying supernatural
power, far beyond even the mightiest of werewolf. He believed they
were out there, somewhere, locked in a galactic battle for
dominance.

Lukas would often ask him of what interest
werewolves could have to beings of such omnipotence and every time
his father’s answer would be unwavering and alarmingly cryptic.

“That’s a good question, my boy,” he always
said. “Let’s find out.”

It was a fool’s dream, but now it would be
Lukas’ dream. He owed his father that much, but as the snarled maw
of a nearby wolf slammed shut beside him, he was forced to abandon
such thoughts and focus on the task at hand. Come next dayside his
dream might be dead, too.

The werewolves passed over the scorched earth
of what was once Wendish land. Their paws burned from the embers,
each footstep worse than the last, but still the werewolves kept
formation, because that’s what their master did.

“Do you feel that, my brothers and sisters?”
Lukas stopped to survey the pack that passed. They were hungry, in
a lust for bloodshed, but they held true in fear of their master’s
reprisal. “Fire, blood, and battle, brought to our home courtesy of
a godless people and their dark ambitions. Tonight, we take back
the night and remind these invaders just whom they are screwing
with! We march down their throats until we stab at their black
heart!”

It was that moment his dark admirer decided
to join him in tonight’s festivities. Corina Petravic, the princess
of multicolored patterns, and her bronzed defender stood behind the
shadow of the tree line. The two of them watched Lukas with
interest and intent, as if they alone knew his true calling in the
world.

The werewolves, so finely attuned to Lukas
Wendish, became aware of his apprehension at the same moment their
master did. They swooped back around to greet the vampires with a
flash of teeth and claw meant to instill the fear that came from
centuries of rivalry.

“Get back!” Lukas commanded to those that
returned to his side. He had to hope that Elsa managed to contact
the witches; that his wolves would be there to meet them in the
throngs of battle, even if he wasn’t. He had to believe that. “This
is my fight! Mine!”

The werewolves were confused over the order,
but they remained in the shadows, all of them save for one. The
silver-haired Aubrey Wendish broke through the impulses that kept
her out of the fight and lunged straight towards the woman that
came after her son.

“No, mother, no!” Lukas cried with hands
stretched out in vain. “You’ve got to stay away!”

Lukas tried to reach out and grab hold of his
mother, but it was too late. A backhand from Akil Fayed saw the
hoary werewolf knocked down to the ground.

Lukas rushed to his mother’s side, but the
shadows behind him kept his contact as brief as possible. Her back
was sprained, but he made no move to bend down and tend to her.
Aubrey would heal soon enough, but not if the vampires made their
move. If that happened, his whole pack would be torn to shreds
before they stole him away in the night.

“You’ll leave here, all of you,” said Lukas
with eyes only for his mother. “Don’t come back here. Not until
Salem has been saved will you return to these fields! Not
one
minute sooner! Do you understand?”

“Do you understand?” Lukas bellowed as loud
he could until he was certain that each of his wolves heard his
warning call. They each nodded their heads, but the question had to
be repeated twice more before the silver haired werewolf came to a
reluctant agreement with her son.

Lukas watched as his mother limped away with
the rest of the pack. Soon their figures would be masked by smoke
and he would be left alone with the dark princess and her
heavy-handed bodyguard.

“I knew there was something,” Corina cackled
in delight as her boney finger drove into his backside. “You’re the
goose that laid the golden egg. Yes, you are—.”

Lukas lashed out with a right hook that saw
the sadistic royal stumble backwards in a bloody haze. Before he
could get another shot off in her direction, Akil stepped into the
picture and grabbed hold of his extended wrist.

“Not tonight,” Akil hissed.

Corina felt the blow more than she thought
she would. The last century saw her cut a bloody swathe across the
Old World and in that time her powers grew by leaps and bounds.
Humans started to resemble ants more than the cattle she once
prayed on. The supernatural races, such as werewolves and succubae,
became less her equal and more akin to the humans she once fed on
exclusively.

That’s when her bloodlust reached frightening
new heights.

Entire packs, dens, and covens were crushed
under her thumb and not a single monster along her path was spared
the experience of her bite. With the draining of each one of her
many victims, not only did Corina’s strength grow, but so, too, did
the many voices in her mind. Louder and more forceful their voices
became as more were added into the fold.