Chapter Seven
Night Kings: The Lady in Red
Gregory Blackman
Until Sunrise
Lukas, still enraged over their fight earlier, raced towards the man in black with everything he had left. Lukas knew what the man was. Knew it since the blow he’d received on the ballroom floor. There weren’t many men that could bruise both flesh and ego, and do so in the name of defense. Not to a man of the Wendish bloodline. And still, just as it had been on the ballroom floor, everything he had wasn’t enough.
Only this time it wasn’t of the man in black’s will. Lukas found that he’d been frozen in place by an invisible force. He said not a word. He couldn’t. Not while the unseen hand clutched at the fabric of his being. All of a sudden that same hand relinquished its grip on Lukas and he collapsed to the floor under his weight.
Unaware of what happened to him; Lukas slinked back to the company of his friends, and asked, “Does someone want to tell me what the hell just happened?”
Elsa couldn’t help but note the look on the man in black’s face while it all went down. He was just as interested as to the source of Lukas’ mysterious time lapse.
“What the hell are you?” Elsa asked of their mysterious intruder.
“What I am is no concern to you, miss,” said the man in black, gaping smirk plastered across his ashen face. “Yet, it would appear at least one of you is already well aware.”
“Who are you?” Gemma asked.
Gemma waited until now to insert herself in the conversation. The man in black saved their lives, of this she was more aware then the others, but he was no friend to them.
The man took a stiff bow in their direction, and said, “Remus Castalon is the name and I fear the fault is mine that you aren’t already well aware. Now it’s been some time since I’ve enjoyed the company of others, but I do believe it’s proper to announce oneself and their auxiliary before they demand it of another.”
“…The fuck did he just say?” Lukas asked as he looked to Elsa and Gemma for support. He would find none given and sunk down low with the shake of his head. “Aw, never mind.”
“What’re you doing here?” Gemma asked. “Your entrance couldn’t have come at a better time. I know what you are. I know what you do. So I ask you once more. What are you doing here?”
“I do enjoy a feisty one,” Remus said, mockingly, “though I had pegged the shorter one for that role.”
“Hey!” Elsa was quick to shout out before she realized the precarious balance her life hung in. “Aw, never mind.”
“My thoughts were to save the young man at the festival of the moon,” the man in black said. “The young man beside you had other intentions and it led to an ill-timed reveal at the manor. I should note that still he remains possessed by her, the lady in red. I could assist—.”
“You’ve done enough,” Gemma interrupted. “We don’t need your assistance any longer.”
Gemma Kohl could be as forceful as any man. Elsa had seen it a number of times, not least being their first encounter, but never before did Elsa believe her friend capable of transcending otherworldly boundaries to force a monster such as this to bend to her will.
“Ah,” said Remus with a swift step backwards, “but that is where you are mistaken, milady. You need more than mere assistance if you care for that stilted friend of yours.”
“Speak.” Gemma took a step forward to show her undead adversary she wasn’t afraid of him. “Then be gone.”
“Aren’t you the least bit curious who the lady in red is?” he asked. “I know the young man is dying to know.”
“He isn’t.”
“Not on your life or mine.”
“You bet I do.”
“Ah,” a brazen Remus said as he raised a finger towards Lukas’ position, “of course he wants to know. He can’t help himself.”
“Speak,” Gemma repeated with another step forward. “Speak your peace and then be gone, for you’re not the only one that should be feared.”
“The lady’s my maker,” said Remus, “and she’s coming for him. She won’t stop coming for him until she’s got what she wants.”
“What does she want?” Lukas asked.
He jumped to his feet in excitement and almost took a step closer before he realized the circumstance he was in. He wasn’t afraid of Remus Castalon, and although he had every reason to be at the moment, Lukas knew that if the battle was on his terms the man in black would be the one with fear in his heart.
“That is the question,” Remus said.
“Tell me!” Lukas demanded.
The lady’s hold on him might’ve been shaken in the scuffle with Elsa, but still Lukas called to her, in his mind, with hopes that she would return. Well, she returned and brought an army of ghouls with her, ghouls meant to maim and kill. And still Lukas called for her, his lady in red, for salvation.
“That’s what I mean to uncover,” Remus answered.
“Well,” said Gemma with another step in the wrong direction, “you’re not going to uncover it here.”
“It’s not often we disagree, Gem,” said Lukas with a low rumble in his belly. “Now isn’t one of those times.”
Everyone in the room waited, even the ominous man in black, for Elsa to add her two cents. She’d done it on every other occasion and there was no reason for her to stop now.
Elsa didn’t have the wherewithal to process everything that’d happened over the course of one night. Ghouls, a man with what appeared the teeth of a great white shark, and now something he referred to as a maker. She could make snide remark after snide remark, but it wouldn’t mask the truth forever.
She was in way over her head. She didn’t know of these monsters before tonight because she was never meant know. This wasn’t her world.
“As you wish,” the man in black said as he took one final bow and slowly backed against the wall. “It was under regretful circumstances this meeting took place. I make no reservations to the contrary and yet I look forward to the night we are all together again.”
With a maniacal laughter the man in black fell back into the shadows of his own accord, past the heaps of bodies that lay in his wake, to a place between light and darkness. He did more than blend with the shadows; Remus became one with them and disappeared into the blackness. All the while his guttural laughter could be heard throughout the Kohl home.
Between the blood and the mirth of her faded caller, something snapped inside the young Elsa Dukane. Her world would not be the same ever again. She understood that now. At least in that regard she stood ahead of the rest of Salem’s citizens.
Elsa looked at the two people she thought she knew better than any. What she believed to be true turned out to be a preconceived notion of friendships that might’ve never existed in the first place. In this moment she was alone. Perhaps it’d been that way from the start.
Elsa balled up her fists and turned back to face her supposed friends with a furor they’d rarely seen from the wide-eyed adventurer. She’d asked politely. Now she would get to the truth—the real truth—the one that hid in the shadows yet existed everywhere at the same time.
“I don’t believe it!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “What the hell are you people?”
Lukas Wendish and Gemma Kohl slowly looked towards one another and then turned back to their bewildered friend. “What do you mean,” they asked in unison, “you people?”
The End
The Story Continues in Night Kings: The Raven Watches
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The Lady in Red (#1, Night Kings) Page 7