“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?”
Chapter Eight
Night Kings: The Raven Watches
Gregory Blackman
Behind Dead Eyes
The Festival of the Moon had come and gone in Salem. Most of its citizens had walked blissfully away from Blackrose Manor that night, unaware of the predators that lurked behind every nook, every statue, and every shadow of the otherworldly home of the Castalon family.
Lukas accompanied two of his oldest friends to the festivities, but it was the mysterious lady in red that captured his heart and his imagination. Little did he know then, but he’d fallen under her spell and would remain as such until he’d found the strength to purge his inner demons. It was a tall task for most men. Near impossible for those such as Lukas Wendish.
It’d been days since that night and still the lady lingered in his mind. He found himself in a place few in Salem frequented. That place was the Night’s End, a bar off the map of normal society, built along a road one traveled only when one wished to become lost. Only Lukas wasn’t lost. He knew damn well where he was.
“What’ll it be?” the bartender asked. He was a monstrous man with arms as thick as his neck and an apparent temper to match. He narrowed his focus and leaned in closer for a better look.
Lukas had never been more afraid in his life and instantly regretted the decision to come here. If these men figured out what lay beneath the surface the Night’s End would become an entirely different scene. Lukas thought so intensely to keep his composure that he’d overlooked the bartender’s question, a bartender that now looked back at him with menacing eyes
“You blind, deaf, or dumb, boy?” asked the bartender. “What’ll it be? I won’t be asking again.”
“Whatever you’ve got on draft,” Lukas answered softly. He was unsure whether he’d ordered the correct drink, but it prompted a response from the bartender and he took it as good a sign he could’ve hoped for. He still had his head.
Lukas was underage, but the Night’s End wasn’t a bar known to card those that entered. There were a few faces in the bar at this moment that appeared under the age of majority, but beyond their dead eyes lurked a predator older than they appeared.
The bartender came back with a musty tankard and offered it to Lukas, but it was promptly withdrawn when he reached out to accept the drink without the proper coin in hand.
“Not so fast,” the barkeep said to the surprised young man before him. “That’ll be the standard.”
Lukas fumbled as he reached for his wallet and looked up at the towering figure. “The standard would be…”
“The same as anywhere else in the state,” said the bartender coldly. It’d become obvious that the conversation wore on the man. He wasn’t interested in shooting the breeze any longer than he had to.
“Uh…”
Being underage, Lukas hadn’t been afforded many opportunities to purchase booze. So
when it came to a standard price he hadn’t any idea what he was speaking of. That was because there wasn’t such a thing in and the bartender could see Lukas coming from a mile away. The bartender may not have known exactly what Lukas was, but he knew the youngest of the Wendish clan when he saw him.
“Look at that,” the man said, as he drew a hand closer to Lukas’ opened wallet. “It’s precisely this much. Wouldn’t you agree?”
The barkeep grabbed at Lukas’ wallet, seized two of his bills, and waved it back in his face to make sure the deal was acceptable to the beleaguered young man. A dejected Lukas accepted the offer for he knew it would be the only one he would get.
Lukas’ hand trembled as he grasped the tankard he’d been handed. It could be anything that swirled inside this pewter mug. He shuddered to think of the possibilities that lay inside so he dove in lips first and let his taste buds decide.
He was no connoisseur, but it was a satisfying enough taste for his palate, and when he lowered the mug from his mouth and wiped his frothy lips clean, Lukas hopes were confirmed as he laid eyes on the golden brown ale he’d just consumed. There wasn’t a drop of red anywhere to be seen.
For a brief moment the booze washed away all sense of fear and self-doubt that clouded his mind. That feeling lasted nowhere near as long as he’d hoped it would and soon he returned to the frame of mind that’d brought him here in the first place. He wanted to fight back, more than that he wanted to matter, yet his experience with the unruly barkeep reminded him where he stood in the world.
With eyes on the tankard pressed to his lips, Lukas finished what remained of his drink while an undetected shadow crept over the bar counter on route to the misplaced youth. When he finally put down his mug and realized something stood behind him, Lukas found the courage he sought and took the opportunity to strike first against a would-be aggressor.
Lukas’ attempts at antagonism were ground to a halt no sooner than he rolled his fingers into a fist. He blacked out for a fraction of a second, just long enough to see him off balance and down to the wooden floor. It brought upon him and his dark stranger the attention of all those that sat inside the Night’s End. Lukas recognized that as he slowly dragged himself off the floor and back to his barstool.
His gaze was slow to shift to the ominous figure that’d so easily struck him down. If the man wanted him dead it would have happened before he hit the floor. Only it wasn’t a man that’d halted Lukas.
It was Gemma Kohl and she’d come to bring her misbegotten friend home. There were a dozen eyes on Gemma, but she didn’t cringe from the spotlight, she owned it and everything it touched. A wave of her hands saw the other patrons back to their drinks and out of her business.
“My apologies,” she said to the bartender before he could reach for his weapon. “We’ll be out of here immediately.”
And they were. Gemma wasted no time as she taught her friend a valuable lesson in humility. She kicked Lukas’ butt out the front door and to the ground where he rolled on the dirt.
“How’d you find me?” Lukas asked. “I haven’t exactly made it easy.”
“No,” she said, “you haven’t.”
Gemma Kohl wasn’t the type to risk exposure at the hands of her most immortal of enemies. That was before one of her friends decided to walk into a nest of them in hopes of knowledge that might just kill him.
“What the hell are you doing?” Gemma asked with hands on her waist. “Visiting a known vampire bar? Are you kidding me?”
Her ashen skin glistened in the fresh night sky and forced Lukas to refocus on the single presence in front of him. He hadn’t drunk nearly enough to feel as he did. It was the darkness inside, the lady in red, and she clawed at him from within.
“That’s none of your business!” Lukas roared as he dropped to the dirt and clutched at his head in an unseemly fashion. He was in agony, irate at the world, even more so in himself, and no matter how hard he tried to shut himself away the lady wouldn’t hear of it.
“You want to find her,” said Gemma, “don’t you?”
“Don’t lecture me.” Lukas pushed off from the ground and took a forceful posture towards his once complacent friend. He would fight her to the last word, he would fight himself if need be, all for the lady in red that haunted his fractured mind.
“You’re still possessed,” said Gemma, “and it only gets harder from this point on. You need to be strong, son of Bernhard, for this darkness takes deepest root in those of your kind.”
“Wait a minute, wait just a bloody minute,” Lukas said as he began to pace back and forth through the empty parking lot. “You don’t have a car… we’re miles from Salem and you don’t have a friggin’ car. How the hell did you get here?”
“You’re attempt to change the subject only proves you walk on shaky ground,” Gemma said. “Even the lady you so desperately cling to can see that plain as day.”
“Do I?” argued Lukas, of less than sound mind and ready to lash out at all that kept him from his dark lady. “What are you? You seem to know what everyone else in this town is, but none of them dare speak ill of the Kohl family. Why is that? What are you hiding, friend of mine?”
Gemma knew better than to show fear in the face of the unnatural and took the same step forward she had with the undead Remus Castalon. “That’s the monster in red speaking to you. Do not become that man. Do not become her man.”
Gemma tried to reach out to Lukas, but he would have none of it and shoved off any assistance.
“Don’t push me away,” Gemma warned.
“Get back!” cried Lukas as he clutched at his stomach in agony. He turned back to Gemma with eyes bursting of amber light and growled to the moon in sweet release. “I’m already beyond your reach.”
The monster in Lukas was unlike those that lurked inside the bar. He was in control of his demons until the moment he wasn’t. It started with hair, golden as the stars that lined the night sky, and muddied in the blood and flecks of flesh that peeled off him as if it were a diseased part of him the monster rejected. After that followed the crack of bones, too numerous to count, and only matched in revulsion by the contortions his body made while it happened.
The wolf inside him came out with a furor not even the possessed Lukas could know. He wasn’t Lukas Wendish any longer. He was the wolf, now emerged from the bile of what Lukas once was, and a creature all to himself. Part wolf and part something entirely else in between, the monster inside Lukas stood hunched on all fours with his broad neck arched towards the moon.
A frenzied howl tore through the area and sent all the creatures of the night into the darkest of recesses in retreat. There was only one creature remained and it wasn’t the mysterious brunette that tried to bring Lukas back from the brink. It wasn’t a vampire and it wasn’t a werewolf. It was the most unassuming of creatures and it watched with a great deal of intent with its beady little eyes, for this littlest of creatures knew a secret that few in the town of Salem were privy.
Chapter Nine
Night Kings: The Raven Watches
Gregory Blackman
Through the Looking Glass
Back in the gated community of northern Salem, Elsa found herself in a prison of an entirely different construct. It was a prison within her home and ruled over by an overzealous father that couldn’t let go of the past.
Elsa had been under house arrest since the Festival of the Moon. She ignored her father’s orders and paid the price accordingly. She knew the severity of her decision; knew that she’d face repercussions. Still, she took it upon herself to throw caution to the wind and escape the confines of her house. After all, she thought at the time, there was every bit the chance she’d fall to her death in the shower.
Against her wishes Elsa was in the family room at the same time as her father. They watched the news together, or rather, tried to watch the newscasts separately while each refused to allow the other to win another of their silent arguments.
She knew her father loved
her. It was, however, an abundance of misplaced love that drove a wedge between them.
That love was the reason Gemma and Lukas had been denied entrance into her home and into her life. Gemma had closed herself off to the world and Lukas had simply vanished off the edge of it. She was alone.
“Another body was found today,” her father said after almost an hour of silence. “A young man named Geoffrey Aberdeen. Does that ring a bell?”
Elsa first thought was to tell the truth and admit they had more than a few classes together over the years. She didn’t know him well. He kept to himself and stuck to the audio visual clubs after class. Still, she worried of her father’s response and denied any prior knowledge of the individual.
“No,” she said. “His name doesn’t ring a bell, but the Aberdeen family has my condolences.”
Victor Dukane sat slumped in his leather club chair. He said nothing. He just stared his daughter down while he twirled his long stemmed glass around in his boney fingers. He wasn’t angry. He loved his daughter far too much for that. Yet, what stirred inside him was deadlier than any bout of rage. It was fear that guided his hand and fear that controlled him.
Salem had become a more dangerous place overnight. None understood that better than the city’s distinguished mayor. And still, for every dark secret he was privy to there was another that went by unchallenged. Even those closest to him in the city hall had their own secrets he’d yet to uncover.
He’d thought of allowing his daughter a glimpse into his dark world, but where would he stop? Which secrets could he reveal and which would send her to the brink of insanity? For once one has seen the dark truths about Salem’s true nature it cannot be unseen. His little girl would cease to be in the blink of an eye.
“Well,” said Victor, “you should recognize the name Geoffrey Aberdeen. The two of you went to the same high school for four years. He stayed home from college to help his ailing father…”
Night Kings: The Complete Anthology Page 4