Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (9 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Night Kings: Sunkeeper

Gregory Blackman

Paid in Blood

Victor Dukane was many things to the people
of Salem. To some he was tyrant, others a divine leader, and a
select few that may never know he was betrayer. It took a man of
many faces to rule over the population of Salem. Like every major
city in the country, Salem was home to more than just humans, but
the mayor of this particular city knew things his compatriots
didn’t.

Supernatural creatures of all sorts roamed
these streets and it took a mayor of ill repute to fight them in
the light and fight them in the darkness. It was for that reason
Salem has known more mayors than any other city in the entire
country. Many preceded Victor, but few had known his longevity in
office, regardless of their place on the map.

It wasn’t honor that kept Victor in power
over the decades nor was it charisma. It was his moral code, or
lack thereof that kept the peace among the unknowing populace and
the monsters that stalked them.

On this night he stood atop city hall and
looked over the city he controlled. It was a view that once looked
over the whole city, from Blackrose Manor in the south to the newly
developed suburbs to the north. All that he surveyed was his. That
was how it used to be. Not anymore.

Now his view was blocked in all directions by
towers of varying size and scope. Some were controlled by the
humans that lived in his fair city, others by the undead vampires
that used their royal coffers to buy up all the land of value. It
was the ones controlled by forces he hadn’t uncovered that worried
him the most on this night.

He wasn’t alone in that concern. He wasn’t
even alone on that night. There was another atop city hall, one
that felt at home in the shadows, and one that was no stranger to
this rooftop.

“Good evening,” Victor said to his darkened
guest.

“They’re all good to me,” the lady in red
replied as she approached from behind, “each and every one of
them.”

She took up position next to him and leaned
over the side of the building. Down below city hall there walked
dozens of citizens, unaware of the presence that prowled above, and
of the darkness that lingered in her wake.

“Men once feared the fall from this rooftop,”
the lady said. “Not anymore. Not the lofty heights of Collard
Industries exist.”

Both of them turned their attention to the
tallest building in Salem. It was a monolithic structure that
towered over all the other buildings around, even those the
vampires bought out upon construction. The building’s bright lights
seemed to run around the clock, although not a person in Salem
could speak as to what Collard Industries produced. Whatever it was
that went on inside, it had the full attention of the lady and
Salem’s esteemed mayor.

“Now I could hang a man by his ankles and he
still might believe it a survivable fall,” Xenia said wistfully,
“one of many illusions that stem from that unholy creation.”

“Similar words could be said of you,” Victor
said with a smirk cut wide across his face. He gave a presumptuous
snort of self-approval and turned to face the lady with arms
crossed in insubordination.

“You have something on your mind,” the lady
responded. “Find your tongue or see it removed from your
mouth.”

Victor’s arrogant grunt turned into a full
blown bellow that saw his arms around his belly to keep his innards
from falling out. “All these visits of ours, and yet, you still
resort to idle threats. You won’t harm me. Not because you lack the
needed affinity towards me, but because it would mean you’d need to
find yourself a replacement.”

The pragmatic mayor of Salem wasn’t wrong. He
wasn’t entirely correct, either. There were limits to her clemency
and as the years crept on he approached the ends of that limit. She
asked Victor a question and had yet to obtain a response. Instead
the lady received the sarcastic retort of a man with many targets
on his back.

“Was it you that killed the reaper?” Victor
asked.

The lady returned her focus to the street
below and let the wind blow by as she contemplated her answer. She
hadn’t killed the reaper; and worse yet, she had to learn from
humans of the discovery. It was an insulting situation she had been
placed in once already. One she wouldn’t see repeated.

“This is why I come to you, old man,” said
the lady in red with a flick of her tongue. “So few of my kindred
have the fangs to accuse me of the actions you do. Tell me, Victor
Dukane, what makes you think it was I that did the deed?”

Victor turned his back to the lady and cursed
his fate. He had only conjecture and hearsay to aid him in his
search and when no answers could be uncovered he decided to go
straight for the source, and said, “Because I know of no one else
strong enough to kill one.”

The lady in red furled her brow and looked
the mayor dead in the eyes. “You truly believe I’d risk war with
the reapers?”

“You mean after the genocide of your race?”
asked Victor, sharply. “Why, my dear lady, I believe you’d be
capable of anything.”

Her patience had been tested and now verged
on collapse. She allowed only one to speak to her in such a manner,
and Victor Dukane wasn’t half the man her eldest son was. Victor’s
time would be at an end, soon enough, all she needed was to wait
long enough and pull the trigger.

“You were hardly this insubordinate when I
fed you all of that information on the others in Salem,” the lady
stated as she stepped backwards into the darkness. “Remember that
you
were the one who approached me on that fateful
night.”

With those words she left having gotten the
information she needed; and she did so without tipping her hand in
the slightest. There was a disturbance down below, in the streets,
one that threatened her kind in the shadows they once ruled. She
knew what that disturbance was now and it was worse that she
feared.

As the lady slipped into the shadows, Victor
knew he still wasn’t alone. There was another there, one that
waited, and one that listen—just as they’d been told.

“Thank you for giving me the time I
required,” Victor said to the towering figure that crept outward
from the shadows.

“Did she do the deed?”

The hooded man behind the voice was still
enveloped in the shadows, but Victor Dukane already knew with whom
he spoke. It was one of his closest allies inside city hall and
outside where their storied history kept them close together.

“I don’t believe so,” Victor replied, “but
who can be certain of anything with that bitch around.”

“When shall it be her time?”

“Soon,” Victor mused. He walked over to the
darkened section of the rooftop and extended a hand to his obscure
associate. “When we have what we need. Come, Hans, let’s get to
work.”

Chapter Seventeen

Night Kings: Sunkeeper

Gregory Blackman

Werewolf, Fried

In the forests north of the harbored confines
Victor Dukane found himself was another of his lineage in a similar
situation. Elsa was embattled with a monster, but this was a
monster of entirely different construct.

Lukas Wendish’s snarl cut a wide arc across
his fanged maw. Not once did his eyes leave her tremulous thighs,
full of meat and the tastiest of blood. He came no closer to her
than she did to him. Still, he wouldn’t let her go so easily.

If this was going to be the end so be it.
That’s what ran through Elsa’s mind when faced with what might come
next. She waved her small knife in the air, as though it might do
her any justice in the event of an attack. She knew better than
that. Yet, there were few options left in which Elsa could mount a
proper defense. This was all she had.

It could’ve been a million to one odds and
still Elsa Dukane would stand her ground in front of a broad oak
tree. She could only hope that logic prevail them tonight and force
Lukas to regain but a small portion of the man he once was.
Possession be damned. He was still under there somewhere. She had
to believe that.

The smallest of flinches saw that theory
tested. The earth was torn asunder as Lukas charged towards an
unconvincingly stalwart Elsa. She didn’t move an inch as he came,
although she had every reason to do so.

Elsa waited until the last possible second to
decide her pitiful stiletto was no match for his serrated incisors.
She leapt to her side and narrowly avoided Lukas’ locked jaws that
saw him crash into the great oak and send a flurry of splinters
into the air behind him.

Elsa had a brief moment to recollect her
thoughts upon the matted soil before the wolf picked himself off
the ground. Elsa attempted to dig her nails into the ground and
claw her way out of the ditch she’d fallen into, but it took her
far longer to rise than she hoped and in her moment of victory she
turned around to see it all crash down around her.

Not only had the wolf recovered from the
stunted blow, but the possessed Lukas Wendish had already made a
move on her throat.

Elsa shrunk back and threw her hands in front
of her face. She waited for her inevitable end, but it was an end
that wouldn’t come. A luminescent burst caught the gaps between her
fingers and shone onto her now wide open eyes. It was followed by
the sound of a whimpering wolf and when Elsa took her hands down
she understood the reason why.

Lukas was set afire by an unknown force. He
tried to outrun the flames, but they were one with him and carried
him off into the night.

All the while his languished howl filled
Elsa’s already clouded mind. She swore that she could hear his
voice long after his flickering silhouette vanished. It was a
horrid sound, accompanied by a stench of equal proportions, and a
memory she hoped wouldn’t linger.

There was a shadow in the foreground that
Elsa Dukane hadn’t noticed until the wolf’s unanswered cries for
help died with the wind. She spun around to greet that person with
a right hook, but was hurled to the ground instead.

Elsa’s pocket knife was thrown aside and out
of reach by the time she hit the dirt. She turned to face her
silent antagonist, but was stunned to learn just whom it was that
sent her to the ground.

“I warned you,” said a less than enthused
Gemma Kohl with empathetic hands extended. “Lukas cannot be trusted
any longer. He’s nearly under the lady’s complete control now.”

“I don’t believe that,” Elsa said, flatly. “I
refuse to believe that.”

“And
that
is why you would’ve died
here,” Gemma said with a hushed tone and cold, dead eyes.

She stepped towards Elsa and in response her
friend took one step back. It was a common reaction when faced with
the powers she possessed. Unlike the vampires and werewolves, her
powers were of the spectral realm and could be neither seen nor
felt until it was too late. Such power had a tendency to scare
those outside her circle away.

“What is he?” Elsa asked with her head tilted
upwards to the pale moon. “I thought werewolves could only turn
under the full moon?”

Gemma took another step forward. This time
Elsa held her ground and waited until she received her answer. Elsa
wanted to believe her friend. Wanted to believe that whatever Gemma
said wouldn’t be the same lie she’d been told ever since they first
met.

“A werewolf he is,” said Gemma, “but the full
moon doesn’t grant him control of the wolf inside. That power was
born unto him. The full moon denies them of this power and robs
them of rational thought. Let me be clear, Elsa. Do
not
get
caught outside on the night of a full moon. Not in the city of
Salem.”

Salem once filled Elsa Dukane with pride.
That pride extended to the city that raised her, the residents that
dwelled within, and her father, the man that reigned from up high.
Pride that’d long since receded to the furthest reaches of her
mind.

This wasn’t the first time Elsa felt this
way. The festival of the moon introduced her to the man that would
see her world forever changed. That was the sight of one so dark
and grotesque that it would drive her to spiteful thoughts of all
those that she once called friend and neighbor.

In the blink of an eye her world became a lie
and all those that kept it from her had done so with an ulterior
motive.

“What about Remus Castalon?” Elsa asked. “I
must know!”

“He is what you believe him to be,” Gemma
replied. “Although, should he come knocking at your door in the
middle of the night, a request for entrance would be the least of
your worries.”

Elsa didn’t need to be reminded to fear the
man in black. The first sight of the many notched fangs did that
well enough as it was. There was no romantic attachment in her
heart, nor could there ever be, but Remus had given her the one
thing in this world none had given before. He showed his true self
and made no attempts to hide what he was on the inside. He never
hid the beast within.

“And what are you?” Elsa asked.

Gemma came yet another step closer until
there was nary a hair’s breadth between them. This moment had been
a long time coming and yet she still wasn’t prepared to answer. Not
to the degree her closest friend deserved. This wasn’t her secret
to give. Not entirely.

“I am,” she said, trying desperately to place
the words, “harder to explain.”

Chapter Eighteen

Night Kings: Sunkeeper

Gregory Blackman

Incriminating Behavior

It was late into the night and still the
mayoral office was alive with activity. Only the lights in the
office were turned off and Victor Dukane had long since left for
the night. Bernhard Wendish was crouched down low as he flicked
through the furthest reaches of the Victor’s personal cabinet.