Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (8 page)

“It’s my job to know,” Sarah said with a
devilish smile. She’d waited long enough and decided the time was
right to thank the man for all he’d done for her. It was, after
all, the very thing she did best in this world.

She led him by hand down the nearest back
alley. At first he hesitated, but she could tell that this was
something the man had thought of, as well. They always thought of
it around her.

“What are we doing?” he asked, nervously.

“Like you don’t know,” Sarah answered. She
pushed Ben against the brick wall wrapped her arms around his waist
in a passionate embrace.

They continued on through the rain for some
time as they soaked up every moist drip each other had to give. It
wasn’t until Ben pulled back in pain that he realized his fervent
admirer was in this for much more than him.

Blood dripped down his bottom lip into
clasped hands that hid abhorrent expression, for it wasn’t the
Jezebel with hair of fire that he looked upon any longer. It was
the face of a monster, one with a whole host of fangs, each one
meant from evisceration and death.

“What the hell are you?” Ben cried out.

But it was too late for him. He was already
dead. Ben struggled to liberate himself from her grasp, but there
wasn’t an inch to budge. His life was amusement to his unholy
attacker and it was the fear he produced she relished in at this
moment. And in Ben there was an endless supply of fear. While he
still lived.

Before Sarah’s lips could press themselves to
the neck of Ben a hood was thrown over her face and tightened to
the point of suffocation. She fought and clawed her unseen
attackers, but there was little she could so against their silver
lined gloves.

While these men may have lacked the strength
of their otherworldly victim, their hands were akin to fiery embers
that set fire to every part of her they touched. Sarah was pulled
back into the darkness and away from Ben’s arms.

He sunk to the ground in horror as he watched
several hooded men bring down the woman that seduced him then tried
to drain him of fluids. He had no idea what to make of the scene
that had unfolded here tonight. Ben shut down, stiff as a board,
and eyes locked on what lay in front of him.

These men showed no fear in the face of a
monster such as Sara Matheson. Ben didn’t still know what that
monster was. In the end it didn’t matter. These men certainly knew
all too well what they dealt with. They struck her in the head
repeatedly with metal bats and refused to stop until she ceased
movement of any sort.

Was she dead? Only Ben wondered that. The men
that came to his rescue knew better than that. The largest of them
scooped up Sarah’s unconscious frame and slung it over his
shoulder. With a nod of his head the two others stepped to his
command and turned back to the entrance of the alleyway.

“What of him?”

“He’s seen too much.”

The man in charge nodded to the figure
closest to the nearly catatonic Ben, and with Sarah still over his
shoulder, he began his exit into the night. That left the men he
given his orders to see to it and dispose of tonight’s
eyewitness.

The glint of the man’s steel caught Ben’s
attention and he was brought out of his self-induced trance. For a
split-second Ben regained what he once was before the bullet left
the man’s steel chamber. Now he’d learn what it meant to breathe
your last breath.

All while the lifeless Sarah Matheson was
carted off into the night, unbeknownst to all, apart from one that
watched it all go down from above.

A flap of his matted feathers saw the raven
off the signpost he rested and into the dreary night sky. He saw
what needed to be seen.

Act Two

Sunkeeper –
Dayside

Chapter Fourteen

Night Kings: Sunkeeper

Gregory Blackman

Ashes to Ashes

It was a dark place that a certain young
woman found herself. She couldn’t see past her own hands and
struggled to see the four walls that enclosed her to the world.
Those hands were bound by thick chains, and no matter how hard she
fought to free herself, those chains wouldn’t budge.

Even with her vampiric night vision, Sarah
Matheson couldn’t see past the shroud placed just outside her
reach. It was as if a presence lingered in the room. One not even
she could see. Sarah was covered in her own blood. They were from
wounds long since healed, but they came at the expenditure of a
great deal of blood. That made her weak, dazed, and in bemusement
of how she ended up in this situation.

A vision struck her when least expected and
Sarah Matheson was suddenly transported back in time. She was
attacked in the middle of a feast by men unknown to her. She was
beaten for the better part of an hour, and after they’d had their
fill, they threw her in this darkened cell where she waited
now.

It was a cell with no bars, only walls, and
one door that barred her from the freedom she so desperately
yearned for. There was a man in there with her and he wouldn’t
leave until he’d gained the information Sarah was believed to
possess. Only she knew for sure, and what she knew, was nothing at
all. That didn’t stop the man from beating her senseless while he
asked his questions.

It soon became apparent to her captor that
Sarah didn’t know anything of the lady or the reaper. Sarah was
then left in a pool of her blood and sealed off from the world.
Consciousness was lost soon thereafter.

“Help!” she cried to the darkness that
surrounded.

There was no response.

“Help!”

“Is there anyone out there?”

“Can no one hear me?”

“No one comes for you,” a figure said from
beyond her vision. “No one comes for those that hunt in the
night.”

A barely coherent Sarah Matheson looked
towards the door that barred her departure from this dreadful
place. It was still sealed shut with not a sliver of light peeking
out from behind. Whoever spoke to her hadn’t been on the other side
of that door.

Was there another in this cell or was it an
imagined voice that called to her alone?

“I need to feed,” a disheartened Sarah said.
“I’m too weak. I... I can’t take this anymore. I’m going to fucking
snap.”

“I’ve heard that before,” the man said.

“I’ll die soon,” whispered Sarah, without the
energy to give a damn. “You don’t want me to die. Do you?”

“We all die someday.”

Not only had Sarah been robbed of her meal,
but she’d also been taken alive for what amounted to few questions
and much blood loss. It was a grave sin for their kind and all the
more ammunition for the lady in red to lead her to the slaughter.
Even if she got out of this place, she would never escape the
lady’s wrath.

Now Sarah could add her dark companion to the
list of things she was fed up with. Was he friend, foe, or a
figment of a delirious state of mind? To a starving vampire he
could be only one thing. He would be her next meal.

“What the hell, man?” asked Sarah as she
fought to rise from the ground. “When I get out of here yours will
be the first neck upon which I feast!”

A guttural mirth bellowed throughout her
cell, a contrived laughter from a man that may not even exist, and
more than enough to send her into a fit of rage. She beat her hands
and feet to the ground until the weight of her extremities was too
much for even one of superhuman strength.

“I don’t see that happening any time
soon.”

“Yeah,” said Sarah, “you might be right about
that one.”

Sarah could hear movement from somewhere
outside her cell, but despite her heightened sense of hearing she
was unable to identify its source.

Three times the stranger tapped on her
cell.

“Maybe if you were given the chance to
feed…”

“You play me for the fool, meat bag,” said
Sarah with mild disdain. “If you were going to feed me you wouldn’t
have gone to all the trouble to bleed me dry.”

“Smart girl, but there’s not a thing in this
world I would deny you.”

“Tell me your name,” beseeched Sarah Matheson
as best she could with so little left to give, “so that I may hunt
down your whole bloody ancestry the moment I taste freedom.”

Sarah was ready to lash out and cut out her
stranger’s throat. She had been for awhile. All she need do was
summon the strength to lift off from the ground. It was a feat
that’d proved insurmountable for some time now.

“I’ve no name,” the man answered. “Not a man
that matters any more.”

“Then you deny me everything,” a dejected
Sarah Matheson said.

“Aw, you can’t blame a fellow for trying.”
His laughter once again overtook the small cell she was placed in.
Yet, this time the man’s amused laughter had turned notably sour.
He enjoyed this, Sarah realized, far more than any man should. She
cupped her ears and tried to draw out the maniacal laughter from
her head. It was futile to resist and still the man’s voice
penetrated her shattered psyche.

There was nothing she could do. No one she
could call upon. Sarah Matheson was lost to the world. The world
lost to her. She would die in this cell, and all the while, her
dark stranger would be there, laughing as it went down.

Chapter Fifteen

Night Kings: Sunkeeper

Gregory Blackman

Not in Kansas Anymore

It was well past curfew when Elsa Dukane
arrived at the location where the reaper’s body was found. She was
alone in the darkness with only a pocket knife to protect her. With
her fingers wrapped around its slim hilt Elsa brandished the knife
in all directions as she jumped from shadow to shadow. She knew the
risks.

It was the consequences of not finding her
wayward friend that worried her most.

There weren’t many places Elsa knew to look
for Lukas outside the forests of Salem. She figured this would be
as good a place as any to begin her search, and although she hadn’t
realized it at the time, this was the place where her life turned
for the worse.

Elsa hardly knew what a reaper was, let alone
his purpose for being here, but the man’s death had spun her father
into a frenzied panic and the city along with him. She was sworn to
secrecy, told that if word broke of what she’d found in this spot,
Salem would cease to exist as she’d known it.

She didn’t know what that meant. Her father
did and in her household that was all that mattered. Was it the
reapers that would come for their fallen brother? Or was there
another danger that lurked beyond the veil of darkness? Whatever it
was, her father wasn’t about to tell.

The only light Elsa had to guide her on this
journey was the waxing moon that loomed overhead. She wasn’t sure
what Lukas was exactly. He hadn’t said a word since the ghoul
attack and when she pressed harder he walked right off the map.
Elsa needed to find him.

Elsa did it not for the nascent emotions that
stirred within the pit of her stomach. She did it because he would
do the same for her.

She’d ruled out Lukas as a possible vampire
and the exclusively female succubae. Werewolf was her running
theory and with the next full moon still weeks away she figured he
wouldn’t be able to turn. And if he was something else entirely she
was in big time trouble.

All the critters in the woods had retired for
the night. Not even the owls dared hoot at night in the city of
Salem. That left Elsa with no one but her imagination to guide her
to a lighter place than she presently dwelled. And wander her mind
did.

“Maybe he’s a buffalo monster… though he’d
probably have a rough time getting though doorways.”

“He could be a half panther man… no, that’s
just ridiculous.”

“Are pyromancers real? Or are they just
modern age pyromaniacs?”

These thoughts continued for some time in the
mind of Elsa Dukane, scared out of her gourd, and using the
audaciousness of her circumstance to make light of the situation.
There could be anything out here. That’s what scared her the
most.

She waited in the trounced over grove where
the reaper’s body laid. Her father had cleaned up not just the
body, but the entire vicinity. Elsa stood over what once had been
engraved into her mind, but it was now a scene far removed from
what had once been.

There was no blood to be seen. No trails of
flesh and gnarled carcass. Nothing to remind her of the carnage
that’d opened a portal to a mysterious new world.

A surge of pressure struck Elsa when it was
least expected and she struggled to keep her balance. She grabbed
at her head in agony and cried out for the pain to subside. This
wasn’t an unknown occurrence to the young Elsa Dukane. There were
times in her adolescence when she’d lose control of her legs, her
arms, sometimes even her consciousness. And there was only one man
that could ease her pains.

That man was her father, Victor Dukane, a man
that saw her through the good times and the bad. Those days were
long gone, now replaced by a noncommittal disdain that seemed to
change little with each passing day. She couldn’t blame her father.
He wanted to see her safe from the dangers that loomed over the
city of Salem. Little did he know that was the reason she was being
driven astray.

It took several minutes before Elsa could
regain her composure. Still it throbbed, but it subsided to
manageable proportions and she found the strength necessary to
unclasp her hands from around her head. It was at that moment she
realized that no longer was she alone in these woods.

Elsa had found her wayward friend, or rather,
Lukas had found her. Only it wasn’t the Lukas she hoped to find. It
was the monster beneath Elsa dealt with now. She had come all this
way for this opportunity. She wouldn’t walk away now that Lukas’
true self was revealed to her. The problem was that neither would
the rabid werewolf across from her.