Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (7 page)

“I do what I can,” said Remus, grinning from
ear to devilish ear. His relationship with the queen, if it could
be called that, had been strained over the centuries.

Once, he stood a monster eager to dish out
his mistress’ punishment. Remus, the man in black, was the monster
that other monsters feared, for if he came to greet you in the
night, it meant you were already dead. Then his lady vanished and
he ceased to be the hand of death he once was. No more was Remus
the monster the lady in red made him. Now he was his own
monster.

“You know,” the lady felt obligated to
remind, “that any other vampire would be defanged for speaking to
their queen with such disregard.”

It was a fact none knew better than Remus,
for he was always the vampire that defanged. He wasn’t her only
progeny, but in those days there were none with analogous bloodlust
in their blackened hearts.

“Ah, see,” said Remus, “here I thought you
laid your crown to rest on the voyage to the New World.”

“A true queen needs no crown upon her head to
rule,” the lady was quick to point out.

“Apparently.”

“You can’t hide him forever,” she said. “He
will
belong to me and then you’ll remember your place in
this world.”

Remus took those words to heart and gave his
dark mistress the respect she deserved. The lady in red could have
her prize. His eyes were fixed on another.

“You can do what you wish with the wolf,”
said Remus as he backed away from the iron gates that separated
them from the Dukane household. “All I ask is for the girl. The
rest remains property of the vampire queen, Xenia—.”

With a simple clasp of the lady in red’s
fingers Remus was silenced. None shall speak the lady’s name. That
was one of their oldest commandments. Not even those closest to her
were allowed such detailed knowledge of her past life; a past that
could one day come back to haunt even her dreams.

With nothing left to be said between mother
and son, Remus disappeared into the shrouded forest and became one
with the shadows. All the while he never took his deadened eyes off
the unassuming brunette in the empty house.

Chapter Eleven

Night Kings: The Raven Watches

Gregory Blackman

Watching, Stalking, Preying

Fear; it was the only thing that raced
through the mind of Sarah Matheson as she fled through the back
alleys of Salem’s rough side of town. The rain poured down upon her
and concealed any would be attackers from her sight. It matted her
dyed red hair and caused her clothes to cling to her frame.

She slid all over the glassy pavement and
nearly stumbled to the ground on more than a few occasions as the
hurried down the streets of Salem. This was a neighborhood Sarah
knew well, but never before had it felt so foreign to her. Sarah
Matheson was scared, alone, and hungry. Too far she’d run tonight,
her attackers most likely gone in the night, but still she pressed
on.

Sarah had left her house late in the night in
search of a quick meal, but found only those that lurked in the
shadows. They clawed from those shadows and tried to lure her back
into their world. Death would be a sweet release from the living
hell she was experiencing now.

“Come on, Sarah,” she told herself, “you can
do this.”

The snap of her heels drove her to the ground
and away from the lurker’s outstretched hands. Her life had been
spared, but it wasn’t a life that she seemed all the eager to live.
Sarah was drenched, exhausted, and unaware whether or not she’d
live through the night.

The sound of someone’s footsteps forced her
to slump down behind a dumpster. She ducked down low, but kept one
eye trained on the alleyway entrance so that she could see what
approached. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief when the image of a man
poked out from behind the brick wall and continued on down the
street.

He was a modest enough man in a beige trench
coat with off-color fedora and matching wingtip shoes. Not exactly
the attire one would usually wear when they stalked in the night.
She could tell this was her chance. The only one she might ever get
again.

Sarah Matheson stepped out from behind the
shadows of the dumpster and appeared to the unassuming man she’d
come across. She’d been under duress for the better part of the
night, so when it came time for her to feign the loss of
consciousness, she was already halfway there.

She called out for help the moment her body
crumpled to the sidewalk, and sure enough, the man ran to her as
she’d hoped he would.

“Are you okay?” the man asked.

“Miss?”

“Miss?”

She’d fallen harder than she thought. Even
now she could feel her stomach in chaos, never emptier than it felt
now. It took Sarah a moment to look up at the man and even then she
found the words hard to come by.

“You saved my life,” she said softly.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” the man said
with a kind smile. He kneeled down beside Sarah and scooped her
into his hands. “The name’s Ben.”

Sarah accepted the man’s help as was lifted
back to her bare feet. She glanced down both sides of the street to
make sure her attackers weren’t there, but still the downpour made
sure anything over ten paces was shrouded from her view. They could
be out there. They could be anywhere. Sarah would take her chances
with Ben and she wouldn’t look back. No matter the cost.

What neither of them could’ve known was a
creature did lurk in the shadows. This wasn’t the would-be
assailants Sarah encountered long before she wound up here. This
was another, one that saw a great deal and yet acted on little, and
one that was invested heavily in what his beady eyes had laid
upon.

He was high above the streets where he could
be neither seen nor heard. It was the raven that watched them and
he watched with intent. His eyes always fixed on what others were
trained not to see.

Chapter Twelve

Night Kings: The Raven Watches

Gregory Blackman

Free Running

The heated wind rushed through Lukas’ hair
and set fire to an already fervent heartbeat. It beat for the lady
in red, but the one she longed for had ceased to be. It was the
wolf that she communed with now and the wolf was entirely different
than the last to inhabit Lukas’ frame.

He still felt the lady’s icy hands tug at him
from beyond the supernatural veil, but he was every bit the monster
she was and would fight until his dying breath. That moment would
come soon enough if he couldn’t purge her from the darkest recesses
of his mind.

Lukas’ mad dash through the forests of Salem
were halted when another came at him from above. He went down to
the ground with teeth around his neck and claws upon his chest. It
was another wolf, only this one was nearly twice the size and
colored an immolated crimson to his golden hue.

He kicked at his fiery attacker with his
clawed heels, but it yielded no success against his much larger
foe. Lukas was hurled into the air only to be brought down once
more by the red wolf’s locked jaws. He howled in pain, but it was
no use, for his opponent wouldn’t be so easily sated.

Lukas was thrown against a tree and he
crumpled at its base, defeated, and unwilling to rise for another
bout with his larger opponent. A dismayed whimper signaled his
submission and he reared backwards to show he wished for no more.
The red wolf began to rise in front of Lukas, but it wasn’t in
anger that the beast arose. It began to change into the man inside,
a man that both the wolf and Lukas knew well.

It was the man that brought Lukas kicking and
snarling into this life. He changed along with the red wolf and
soon father and son stood together in the forest.

“I’m not in need of your constant
interference!” Lukas bellowed with hands raised in anger. He waited
for his father’s response, but none was given outside an ill-omened
stare from the man that raised him.

The red-haired Bernhard Wendish turned from
his unclothed son and disappeared into the shadows. It was some
time before he returned with a sack in one hand and an axe in the
other.

“If you want to fight someone, you can fight
me,” his father said. “Not one of those undead abominations.”

He raised the axe above his head in a
threatening fashion and powered it deep into the tree next to
Lukas.

“You don’t walk into a den of our mortal
enemies,” growled Bernhard as he dared Lukas to grasp hold of the
weapon. “You don’t get to do that to your mother. You don’t get to
do that to me. You want to throw your life away? Do it with a shred
of honor!”

He beat on his chest and beckoned for the
young contender to claim his birthright and take on the role of
leader of their pack. It was an honored custom, one that usually
happened much later in life, but Bernhard knew that if his son
continued along this path it would be an honor not received.

“Take it and face me!” Bernhard roared.

“No,” an addled Lukas said. His lips quivered
and fingers trembled in trepidation of what might come to pass. The
sweat beaded down his brow and clouded his already crimson hazed
vision. The lady called for him, beckoned him to pick up the
weapon, but still he could not.

“Yes,” seethed Bernhard with bloodlust in his
eyes. “You’ll do as I command.”

“No.”

“Take it!” his father bellowed.

“No!”

He grabbed onto the axe his father had so
deeply sunk into the tree, and with one tumultuous pull, he
released the weapon from his wooden bindings. And when it looked as
if Lukas was ready to cleave his father in two, he switched his
grip on the weapon and handed it to Bernhard handle first.

Bernhard promptly accepted the axe, and with
a satisfied smile he tossed the sack he’d carried over towards his
careworn flesh and blood. His bluff had paid off handsomely, but he
couldn’t help but worry there was a very real chance that axe
might’ve found a way into his chest.

“This is your fault,” Lukas said with no mind
on the clothes beside him. “All of it.”

“If you’re going to speak the truth,” replied
Bernhard, “then speak the whole truth.”

“You sent me to that forest!” Lukas was teary
eyed, enthralled with one that wouldn’t come to his aid, and ready
to drop down to his knees in despair. “You sent me to that reaper.
Did you have a hand in its death? Is that what the lady wants from
me?”

“She wants nothing but death and decay,” his
father answered. “Do not slip into her web of lies. I heard of a
gathering on the outskirts of town the night of the reaper’s death.
When I sent you to sniff the scent it wasn’t a body I expected you
to find.”

“And so you had me bring along the mayor’s
daughter?” Lukas pounded his fist on the stone beneath him and
further slipped into the lady’s embrace. “Don’t tell me you wanted
her there for moral support. She’s my friend… she
was
my
friend, not that you gave a damn about that. You just went and did
whatever you could to slight Salem’s beloved mayor in secrecy.
Isn’t that right?”

“You know little of what you speak,” Bernhard
said. “It’s the possession that speaks through you.”

Lukas dropped to a knee and howled to the
moon, as if ready to change right then and there. “Oh, eat crow.
I’m so damned sick of that word.”

“I’ll let that slip since you’re under
another’s spell,” Bernhard said as a low rumble emanated from his
belly. “She is killing you, my boy, and she will see the job done
unless you release yourself of her burden.”

“Do you know her?” Lukas asked.

“I know those of her kind,” he replied, “and
I know what their possession can do. For humans it can pass
harmlessly out of their system, but for those of our kind it
festers inside until all that remains is a mindless husk devoted to
the monster that that felled it.”

Lukas had heard enough of his father’s
diatribe. He belonged to the lady in red and she to him. He would
never understand, could never understand. So he turned from his
father in disgrace.

“Something foul is spreading through the town
of Salem,” warned Bernhard as he wrapped a clawed hand around the
arm of his son. “Our pack must run together if we are to see it
through the darkness that comes. If we cannot do that there’ll be
nothing left of us at the end.”

“That’s not my problem.”

“In that, my son, we’re in total agreement,”
said a wistful Bernhard Wendish. “It’s everyone’s problem.”

Chapter Thirteen

Night Kings: The Raven Watches

Gregory Blackman

Hunter or Hunted

Back on the streets of Salem, a shaken Sarah
Matheson confided in the kindness of a stranger.

“Look at you,” Ben said to the young woman.
“You’re shivering.”

Ben took the fedora off his head and offered
it up to Sarah in a show of concern. The rain had died down since
the deluge they experienced earlier, but it hadn’t subsided
completely. Still it barred Sarah’s view and hid those that might
wish not to be seen.

“And starving,” Sarah said with one hand on
her stomach and the other around Ben’s waist. “I haven’t eaten in
days.”

“Why the heck is that?” Ben asked.

“Don’t you live around here?” Sarah asked
innocently enough in return. It was good to feel the warm of
another once more against her side. She wouldn’t let that slip from
her fingers so easily this time.

“I’m here on business,” Ben said.

“Oh,” said Sarah, grinning from ear to ear,
“well, Salem’s not exactly the safest place these days.”

“Why’s that?”

“Not sure,” she answered with her lips
pouted, “but there are a lot of scared people around. That always
means something in this city.”

“How do you know that?”

Sarah looked into Ben’s eyes and was for a
brief moment lost in his innocence. He was a good man. She’d come
to learn that and much more as they walked out of the frying pan
and into the fire.