Night Kings
The Complete Anthology
By Gregory Blackman
Published by Gregory Blackman at Smashwords
Copyright 2013 Gregory Blackman
All right reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Written in Canada.
Gregory Blackman’s Collection
*Released or Coming Soon*
The Reaper Series:
Duster and a Gun
Reaper’s Dogma
Short Story Anthologies:
Night Kings
Moon Gods
The Kingdoms of Ash Series:
The Unseen
Blood Ties
Tip the Scales
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Night Kings:
Humans own the day and yet it’s the supernatural that lay claim to the night. Vampires, the oldest of night’s children, have at last found a home in Salem and it’s a home they’re unwilling to part from. Their mortal enemies, the werewolves, lurk not just in the vast forests that surround the city, but inside the very fabric of the community. Salem has always been able to weather the storm that brew between both factions, but they’re about to learn that they aren’t the only creatures that go bump in the night.
Please Note: Night Kings is a YA collection of eight episodic short stories based in the city of Salem.
Warning: This eBook contains graphic imagery and coarse language.
Table of Contents
Night Kings: The Complete Anthology
Gregory Blackman
Act One
The Lady in Red – The Raven Watches
Act Two
Sunkeeper – Dayside
Act Three
Sisters of Salem – The Red River
Act Four
Darkest of Depths – Old World Cull
Excerpt
Reaper
Act One
The Lady in Red – The Raven Watches
Chapter One
Night Kings: The Lady in Red
Gregory Blackman
No One Weeps for the Reaper
The woods of Salem, Massachusetts, have never been known as a safe place to traverse. Many tales have been spun by the townsfolk over the years of monsters seen in the shadows. No one ever saw the demons that surrounded these stories, but the same shiver went down each and every one of their collective spines to let them know there was more to these tales than some bard’s grandiose imagination.
Legends told of monsters that would linger in wait for a tasty morsel to wander into the forests alone. Those were the dark ones and they would descend upon their unknowing prey, drain them of their blood, and spew out their bones for their next victim to stumble upon. Yet, little did the humans know how close their legends came to reality.
Dark secrets have been a part of Salem since the days the city was founded. That was a time of persecution and ignorance, a time not unlike the one today, but one with fewer options for those of a sinister nature. For even a monster desires land it can call home. Salem was such a place and it attracted monsters far and wide, the monsters that wished to hide in plain sight, and the ones to be feared most of all.
What started as a small settlement on the fringes of society became a towering city that saw its interests vested in all cities nearby. It was from this dark alliance the city came to command such dominance in the region. Yet, it was an alliance still unknown by the humans that thought they owned the city. Elsa Dukane was one such citizen of Salem, all too human, and unaware of the ethereal gauntlet clasped just beyond her throat.
With a soft, ashen complexion and hair as black as a raven’s feather, one could say she was an attractive young woman. Not that she, or anyone else could tell past the thick layer of mud and grime that would often accompany her. She had an adventurous spirit, one that might prove deadly in a town such as this. As a recent high school graduate, Elsa was forced to take a year off from university when her mother passed and her overzealous father forbade Elsa to leave the state with all her friends. That suited her well enough. They weren’t all that close anyway.
Everyone in Salem was normal and that just wouldn’t do. It was as if there was a conscious effort by the townsfolk to cast aside any interesting facets of their lives and live an existence both stoic and introverted. There was work. There was home. And there were few things in between.
It was a brisk autumn afternoon and Elsa found herself in the outskirts of Salem in search of something she couldn’t have prepared to find. Yet she wasn’t alone. Her childhood friend, Lukas Wendish, was with her on this search. It had even been at his insistence the two of them were in these woods in the first place.
They weren’t the typical pair. She was fiery and outspoken with a penchant for using her hands for talking. Lukas, on the other hand, was a lanky and sheepish young man with golden blonde hair and slight pause to his step. The two of them had been side by side since they were toddlers. Her father was the venerable mayor of Salem, and his, a close ally and councilor, meant that often the two of them would spend many nights in seclusion. That left the two of them a world of adventure outside their doorstep, a world that would soon reveal itself in the most gruesome of ways.
The forests surrounding Salem weren’t known to be kind to strangers, but there were no strangers in these woods today. They’d been raised every bit as much in these woods as they had in their homes.
“We’ve been out here for hours now,” a parched Elsa said. “It’s time you spill on what we’re doing out here.”
“A tip,” he replied.
“A tip?” Elsa balked in disbelief. “We’re in the middle of nowhere because of a tip? There any hunches you want to spend the next half dozen hours on next?”
Lukas lifted himself up a small bank and held out an arm for Elsa to ascend. It was a boney hand and not one easy to grasp onto, but she did as he asked and was lifted up with what appeared considerable ease for one with so little meat on his bones.
“Are you complaining?” Lukas asked with a crook in his smile. “I’ve never known you to be critical of anything.”
“Well,” she said whimsically, “of course I’m not complaining. Just would be nice to know what’s going on.”
“That would make two of us,” Lukas said. After he helped me to my feet, Lukas turned back to scan the grove that stood before us. “Something transpired in these woods last night; something that needs to be uncovered.”
“How do you know this?”
“I just do.”
“Did your father tell you?”
“No. Stop with the questions, El.”
“Your father probably told you,” Elsa reasoned to herself. “My dad doesn’t share any of his work with me.”
“It wasn’t him,” Lukas said. “Let it go.”
Elsa grumbled a few choice words into her long coat and moved to keep pace with her expeditious young friend. The sun was on a slow descent into the landscape and soon nightfall would be upon them. Then the woods would be no place for the two of them.
They continued on for some time, without a direction in mind, or any sense of where they needed to
be. They’d passed these same trees and brooks many times, but today was of a different nature. Elsa could see that in Lukas’ eyes, the way he spoke to her, and even the way he moved from step to step.
“We still headed to the festival tomorrow?” Elsa asked.
“What festival?” a determined Lukas asked in return. He continued to search the tree line for any signs of disturbance, oblivious to the world around, a world that included present company.
“The festival of the moon,” she stammered. “You know the one. That festival you called pretentious.”
“Oh,” said Lukas, “well, the thing is I haven’t a thing to wear.”
“Bullshit,” replied Elsa, refusing to hear a word of it. “Gemma’s been down since her mother left and you’re entertaining the ladies whether you want to or not. You got that?”
Lukas gave her no response and instead lingered his eyes on one object of no discernable interest.
“You got that?” she asked once more.
“Lukas?”
“Lukas?”
“Damn it,” she said, “you’re doing it again.”
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but finally she, too, saw what’d captured Lukas’ interest. There was a single red mark, no larger than a handprint, pressed into one of the many trees on the edges of the secluded alcove. The closer they moved to the red mark, the more Lukas was awash in the trepidation of what was to come.
Elsa was quick to take command of the situation and she moved them back to an acceptable pace on approach to the red mark. A foul stench filled the area as they closed nearer. It was an odor unknown to the adventurous, yet closeted Elsa Dukane. Not quite so for the friend next to her now quivering with fear.
“Is that what I think it is?” Elsa asked. She stopped dead in her tracks and stared blankly at the remnants of a man torn to shreds.
“No,” said Lukas softly. “It’s worse.”
For this was the body of no average man. A myriad of pistols, swords, and other collectibles were scattered along the blood smeared next to his carcass. This wasn’t any normal man and Lukas knew it right away.
“It’s not possible,” said a morose Lukas Wendish. “It’s just not possible…”
Chapter Two
Night Kings: The Lady in Red
Gregory Blackman
Peacekeepers
Far from the woods of Salem stood another forest of an equally sinister nature. This was one made of stone and cement, one where the predators walked on two legs and wore suits of immeasurable worth.
In the center of it all was the mayoral office of Salem where a one man finds himself unable to keep the supernatural from sweeping across his city at the turn of night. He called a closed meeting with as little councilor support as he could readily afford given the nature of what’d been uncovered a few hours ago. These were his chosen few, the ones that knew the dark truth behind Salem’s origins.
“So it’s concluded,” the mayor said. “The man is what we thought him to be.”
Victor Dukane had sat in the same chair for two decades, through thick and thin, although in a city such as this there was plenty thick and little thin. Despite the odds, Victor managed to keep his post and see all opposition washed away into a sea of oblivion.
None questioned his leadership, not even the three jackals that stood five feet away from him.
“We believe he is,” Hans Brackhaus confirmed with a nod of his bald head. He was Victor’s oldest friend on the council, and as such, had risen to a prominent position over the years alongside the mayor. He wasn’t the easiest man to speak to, but when Victor needed someone in his corner it was Hans that would answer the call.
“And cause of death?” Victor asked.
“Indeterminable,” said the mountain of meat sitting next to Hans. “The only certainty was that it was an animal of considerable size.”
“How insightful, Bernhard,” said the only female in the room, mockingly, “because we all know this town has an animal problem. I know of no animal capable of doing this to a reaper. Do you?”
Cetra Altaras was a mystery to those around. Her ties to the city were unknown, but all that came to meet the sultry brunette with eyes of azure crystal swore that she was the right woman for the job. Not a single person knew what that job entailed outside the mayor and herself, but none would dare question her worth in city council. Not that she’d hear of it.
She was testing her fellow councilor, prying him for information she thought he might’ve possessed. It was, after all, his son that mysteriously came across the body in the woods. The fact the mayor’s daughter had been present, as well, only added the fuel to her fire.
Bernhard Wendish wasn’t one to be taken lightly and he kept those cards close to his chest. “You know the answer to that question as well as I,” he replied. “I can’t speak on information I don’t have.”
The burly councilor stood a foot taller than the already too large Hans Brackhaus. He was covered in fiery red hair from head to toe with the nasty temperament to match. While men of Bernhard’s ilk never seem to last long in cities such as Salem, it didn’t stop him from throwing his weight around every which way he pleased.
“I see no choice around it,” the mayor said as he reclined in his chair. “A reaper has been slain inside our city borders. I needn’t remind you of the severity of that statement. The body shall be cremated and all traces of his existence here wiped clean. The Order of the Reapers will not learn the truth of what has happened here.”
“And if they do uncover the truth?” Cetra asked.
“Then hope the culprit has been found before that happens,” a solemn Victor answered. He rose from his chair and moved to the window where a waxing crescent moon waited beyond the drapes. It was a difficult decision that’d been forced upon him, one that could prove troublesome for more than just the accused.
The Order of the Reapers was a brotherhood of soldiers bred for the sole purpose of vanquishing the monsters that plagued mankind. To think something had not only taken a reaper’s life, but torn him limb from limb was a prospect both equally intriguing and terrifying to the city’s enduring mayor. The Order would rain political hellfire down on Salem and they would do so without abandon for those caught in the middle. The town of Salem would survive, as it always had, yet an embattled mayor and his closest of confidents wouldn’t be so lucky.
“None of our positions will survive such scrutiny,” the mayor continued after some time at the window. “We turn this city over in search of those that may have had a hand in the reaper’s demise… and we do it without city council’s support.”
“We find out how it happened,” Hans said in concurrence, “and then we uncover what the hell a reaper wanted with Salem in the first place.”
These were the most influential people in the city. Victor Dukane had chosen them for a reason. Not just for close allies, but for those to share in his darkest of secrets. If there were any people in Salem to see this done it would be them. He knew they wouldn’t fail him. Their lives hung in the balance every bit as much as his.
“So,” said the mayor as he turned back to face his councilors, “we’re all agreed on what needs to be done?”
Cetra looked to each of her councilmen, and with a nod from all of their heads, she turned back to face the mayor, and said, “We are.”
“So say we all,” the assembly of four said in harmony. “So say we all.”
Chapter Three
Night Kings: The Lady in Red
Gregory Blackman
Dead to the World
For the embattled mayor of Salem city council was akin to open warfare, but it was his home he feared most of all.
“Quite honestly,” a beleaguered mayor said, “I don’t give a damn what you think of me. I’m doing this for you. One day you’ll understand. And if you don’t that’s your cross to bear. Not mine.”
Victor Dukane had spent most his life in courtrooms and boardrooms, but there was one room tha
t he’d never managed to emerge from unscathed. That room was his dining room, and his opponent, a daughter he’d never been able to understand.
“You want to protect me?” Elsa asked. She rose from the dinner table in defiance and moved to beside her father. “Then let me live my life! Sheltering me from the world outside only serves to drive me further from this damned home!”
There was a real threat out there. None knew that better than Elsa. She’d found the man Lukas had called a reaper, and although she scarcely knew what that title meant, she wouldn’t allow one life taken in violence determine her course in life.
“You don’t have to understand my motives,” Victor said as his daughter stormed out of the room. “You just have to follow them. You’re not going to that festival tonight. Not after what’s happened. That place isn’t safe for you.”
Elsa paused at the doorway of the room and turned back to her face. “You know, dad, you weren’t the only one she left.”
She’d already donned the outfit she’d be wearing for the evening. It was a dusty rose evening dress with sweeping surplice and frilled lace, and a last minute cancelation of her plans was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Elsa fled the main floor and headed to her bedroom. With her door locked behind her she collapsed onto her bed and proceeded to reach for her music player. She wasn’t one to voice her objections so vehemently, but after years of indifference, his now heavy-handed approach to parenting was just another excuse to drive that wedge farther between them.
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