Victor Dukane paused in mid speech and placed a hand over his brow to shield his watered eyes from his daughter. “He was found near the mountains to the west. He’d been there for days… drained… drained of all his blood.”
It was hard for Victor to speak on this matter. Not because of a dead teenager he couldn’t care in the least for, but of the images it brought to his mind; a wife that’d killed herself over knowledge of the supernatural and a daughter he feared might do the same.
“What do you think it was?” Elsa asked. With her interest now piqued she leaned over the couch to get closer to the father she’d tried so hard to avoid.
“I fear,” Victor said superciliously, “that we both know the answer to that.”
Elsa didn’t answer her father. She didn’t have to. They could both see it clear as day. Vampires were at work here. Her first thoughts went towards Remus Castalon, the man in black, a vampire that had come to her rescue a few nights prior. He was a monster, even she couldn’t deny that, but she still wanted to believe he hadn’t been the monster to do such an awful deed.
“It could’ve been you,” Victor said.
He placed his drink on the glass table next to him and rose to his feet. He began to pace around the family room, an enormous room that seemed even larger since his wife, Laura Dukane, passed away not far from the floor he walked upon.
“It wasn’t me.”
“You’re damned right it wasn’t,” he said, “because you’re not to leave this home until Salem is safe from whatever it is that’s killing off our citizens.”
“Be fair. That could be a flipping eternity!”
“Life isn’t fair, child,” said her father, “but we soldier on, because that’s what we do. This isn’t the end of your life, Elsa. This is merely an indefinite pause for your own wellbeing.”
“I-I can’t believe… no, you know what? Forget it.”
There wasn’t a person in Salem that knew better than Victor Dukane on the topic they spoke. From the moon ash foundation his home was built to the silver crown moldings that his roof, there wasn’t anything in this city more capable of defense should it come to outright war between the supernatural races.
All before the reapers inevitably came to finish off those that remained.
“You must be careful, my daughter,” he said somberly, “for the Salem you knew no longer exists.”
Their conversation was brought to an abrupt halt by the ring of their doorbell. As if he’d expected a late arrival, Victor hopped to a new tune and scuttled blithely towards the front door without a word to his bemused daughter he’d so quickly left behind.
Elsa slumped back into her sofa and tried to think of a way out of her present quandary. She listened in as her father went to the door, for what she believed to be any excuse to remove himself from his wayward daughter’s side.
She could tell from the thick Norse accent that it was Hans Brackhaus at the door. He was one of her father’s most trusted confidants and his right hand in all matters he couldn’t discuss publicly. Not even the close at hand Bernhard Wendish or Cetra Altaras had such influence over his decisions.
“I come with good news,” Hans said from outside the door. His baritone voice could be heard throughout the house, long before Elsa’s father ushered him inside from the dark and fearful night. “Are we free to speak?”
“We are,” Victor said.
“Phase two will be implemented by the end of the week,” Hans said hurriedly. “It’s only a matter of time until we have the answers we seek.”
“That’s good news, my friend,” said Victor, “but it hardly comes as surprise. Was there another reason that brought you to my door?”
“You know me well,” Hans said with a forced smile stretched across his face. He accepted his friend’s hand of support and was welcomed into a hallway the size of his home.
“I’m here—,” Hans paused as a lump hit his throat, “—I’m here because we’ve found another.”
Victor motioned for his friend to lower his voice. He looked back towards the hallway where his mutinous daughter stood. He led Hans to the next room over so their conversation could be held in private.
That left Elsa Dukane the rest of the house to herself. Her father was nothing if not predictable. He would be gone long into the night and maybe even the morning. It was a room in which they would scheme until there was little in Salem they didn’t have their hands steeped in. It took everything her father had to keep the city safe. It took nearly everything she had, too.
Elsa laid there on the sofa and pretended to watch the news. All the while her mind wandered to the world she’d only just gotten a taste of, a world that called to her from out of the window. She was blissfully unaware at the time, but there was another that’d come to the Dukane household. Only this guest hadn’t been invited in.
Chapter Ten
Night Kings: The Raven Watches
Gregory Blackman
Minions and Makers
Remus Castalon lived in Salem longer than anyone that had ever settled the storied city. He lived apart from its citizens, and yet it didn’t live, at all. He hadn’t for some time. Over 400 years if he continued to count the years as a human would.
He watched from the forest past the iron gates that surrounded the estate home. It wasn’t with romantic inclinations he watched. There was something in Elsa Dukane’s eyes, something he couldn’t see, but at the same time, couldn’t deny. It was an indescribable quality, one he’d never seen in a human, and one he hoped to become better acquainted with. Yet, it wasn’t for love, power, or wealth that Remus watched. It was the pursuit of knowledge that drove him, knowledge he believed might one day set him free.
Since the emergence of the Hell Gate in 1447, vampires have spread through the world like an undead plague upon the land. In the early years, entire cities fell to their sway and then their countries along with them. Those nosferatu that descended from the bowels of Hell shared no traits with the men and women they stalked. Yet they would, in time, evolve from their simple beginnings as monsters without neither name nor recognition. Monster and man married in an unholy matrimony that would forever change the landscape of what it meant to be human. All before the aptly named Order came to cleanse the haunted grounds they’d claimed in their demonic name.
Through fire and bloodshed their kind was driven to near extinction by those that called themselves reapers. These were men capable of feats far beyond their complicit peers and they turned the land against the vampires. The supernatural race flickered into existence only to be snuffed out by the humans that bore them.
Kindred all over the world owed one vampire, and one vampire alone, for their continued existence. That was the lady in red, her true name a mystery to all but those she deemed worthy. She saved kindred from the brink of destruction, gave them both name and purpose.
Times changed. Vampires became as civilized as their prey and the lady that’d seen them through this darkest of times no longer remained as a figure head for her people. Once more the vampires descended into their dark roots and became the monsters that mankind once feared above all others. Only this time man wasn’t aware of the monsters that stalked them in the night. They were foregone stories of days past that had no basis in the real world. That’s precisely what the monsters wanted the world to believe.
Monsters such as Remus Castalon owned the not just the night, but all the land the darkness surveyed. Until the moment a stronger monster came to take it all away.
One of those monsters was with him now. She had been for some time.
“Your presence is neither needed nor desired,” Remus said with his eyes still locked on the window.
“The needs of others hold little sway in my decisions,” the lady responded as she moved to his side. “You know better than most that I’ve never let anything stop me from getting what I want.”
Remus knew all too well how the lady in red went about getting what she wanted in life. He’d s
een entire bloodlines crushed under heel for but speaking out against her tyrannical ways.
She never apologized for those actions. That would’ve been seen as a show of weakness among kindred. A heavy hand was needed to rule them and a heavier one to survive them. She did more than survive. The lady in red thrived.
“Why return after all these years?” Remus asked.
She looked at her once proud son, placed a loving hand upon his chin, and said softly, “You wouldn’t ask such a question if you knew anything of Salem.”
Remus knew far more than he wanted to know of this city. He had built the largest mansion on the east coast of the New World inside its boundaries. Because of the construction required for such a feat, Salem’s population boomed and turned a town once fraught with witch trials into a city of legend. And he did it all from the shadows.
“Is it because of her you foiled my plans for the young wolf?” the lady asked as her gaze shifted to the family room window.
Remus didn’t respond to his dark mistress. He kept his focus on the house and continued his thoughts towards the young Elsa Dukane. He saw something in her. He just wasn’t sure as to what that thing was.
“I thought you wanted him alive?” asked Remus in attempt to change the subject. “Why send your grunts after him?”
“The ghouls were no more a threat to him than you would be to me,” said the lady with a wave of her hand. “No. This was an excuse to separate him from his human friends. Either the humans he was with would have perished or he would have alienated himself from them forever. All he needed was to transform into the beast that he is. You robbed me of that.”
“I do what I can,” said Remus, grinning from ear to devilish ear. His relationship with the queen, if it could be called that, had been strained over the centuries.
Once, he stood a monster eager to dish out his mistress’ punishment. Remus, the man in black, was the monster that other monsters feared, for if he came to greet you in the night, it meant you were already dead. Then his lady vanished and he ceased to be the hand of death he once was. No more was Remus the monster the lady in red made him. Now he was his own monster.
“You know,” the lady felt obligated to remind, “that any other vampire would be defanged for speaking to their queen with such disregard.”
It was a fact none knew better than Remus, for he was always the vampire that defanged. He wasn’t her only progeny, but in those days there were none with analogous bloodlust in their blackened hearts.
“Ah, see,” said Remus, “here I thought you laid your crown to rest on the voyage to the New World.”
“A true queen needs no crown upon her head to rule,” the lady was quick to point out.
“Apparently.”
“You can’t hide him forever,” she said. “He will belong to me and then you’ll remember your place in this world.”
Remus took those words to heart and gave his dark mistress the respect she deserved. The lady in red could have her prize. His eyes were fixed on another.
“You can do what you wish with the wolf,” said Remus as he backed away from the iron gates that separated them from the Dukane household. “All I ask is for the girl. The rest remains property of the vampire queen, Xenia—.”
With a simple clasp of the lady in red’s fingers Remus was silenced. None shall speak the lady’s name. That was one of their oldest commandments. Not even those closest to her were allowed such detailed knowledge of her past life; a past that could one day come back to haunt even her dreams.
With nothing left to be said between mother and son, Remus disappeared into the shrouded forest and became one with the shadows. All the while he never took his deadened eyes off the unassuming brunette in the empty house.
Chapter Eleven
Night Kings: The Raven Watches
Gregory Blackman
Watching, Stalking, Preying
Fear; it was the only thing that raced through the mind of Sarah Matheson as she fled through the back alleys of Salem’s rough side of town. The rain poured down upon her and concealed any would be attackers from her sight. It matted her dyed red hair and caused her clothes to cling to her frame.
She slid all over the glassy pavement and nearly stumbled to the ground on more than a few occasions as the hurried down the streets of Salem. This was a neighborhood Sarah knew well, but never before had it felt so foreign to her. Sarah Matheson was scared, alone, and hungry. Too far she’d run tonight, her attackers most likely gone in the night, but still she pressed on.
Sarah had left her house late in the night in search of a quick meal, but found only those that lurked in the shadows. They clawed from those shadows and tried to lure her back into their world. Death would be a sweet release from the living hell she was experiencing now.
“Come on, Sarah,” she told herself, “you can do this.”
The snap of her heels drove her to the ground and away from the lurker’s outstretched hands. Her life had been spared, but it wasn’t a life that she seemed all the eager to live. Sarah was drenched, exhausted, and unaware whether or not she’d live through the night.
The sound of someone’s footsteps forced her to slump down behind a dumpster. She ducked down low, but kept one eye trained on the alleyway entrance so that she could see what approached. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief when the image of a man poked out from behind the brick wall and continued on down the street.
He was a modest enough man in a beige trench coat with off-color fedora and matching wingtip shoes. Not exactly the attire one would usually wear when they stalked in the night. She could tell this was her chance. The only one she might ever get again.
Sarah Matheson stepped out from behind the shadows of the dumpster and appeared to the unassuming man she’d come across. She’d been under duress for the better part of the night, so when it came time for her to feign the loss of consciousness, she was already halfway there.
She called out for help the moment her body crumpled to the sidewalk, and sure enough, the man ran to her as she’d hoped he would.
“Are you okay?” the man asked.
“Miss?”
“Miss?”
She’d fallen harder than she thought. Even now she could feel her stomach in chaos, never emptier than it felt now. It took Sarah a moment to look up at the man and even then she found the words hard to come by.
“You saved my life,” she said softly.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” the man said with a kind smile. He kneeled down beside Sarah and scooped her into his hands. “The name’s Ben.”
Sarah accepted the man’s help as was lifted back to her bare feet. She glanced down both sides of the street to make sure her attackers weren’t there, but still the downpour made sure anything over ten paces was shrouded from her view. They could be out there. They could be anywhere. Sarah would take her chances with Ben and she wouldn’t look back. No matter the cost.
What neither of them could’ve known was a creature did lurk in the shadows. This wasn’t the would-be assailants Sarah encountered long before she wound up here. This was another, one that saw a great deal and yet acted on little, and one that was invested heavily in what his beady eyes had laid upon.
He was high above the streets where he could be neither seen nor heard. It was the raven that watched them and he watched with intent. His eyes always fixed on what others were trained not to see.
Chapter Twelve
Night Kings: The Raven Watches
Gregory Blackman
Free Running
The heated wind rushed through Lukas’ hair and set fire to an already fervent heartbeat. It beat for the lady in red, but the one she longed for had ceased to be. It was the wolf that she communed with now and the wolf was entirely different than the last to inhabit Lukas’ frame.
He still felt the lady’s icy hands tug at him from beyond the supernatural veil, but he was every bit the monster she was and would fight until his dying breath. That moment would co
me soon enough if he couldn’t purge her from the darkest recesses of his mind.
Lukas’ mad dash through the forests of Salem were halted when another came at him from above. He went down to the ground with teeth around his neck and claws upon his chest. It was another wolf, only this one was nearly twice the size and colored an immolated crimson to his golden hue.
He kicked at his fiery attacker with his clawed heels, but it yielded no success against his much larger foe. Lukas was hurled into the air only to be brought down once more by the red wolf’s locked jaws. He howled in pain, but it was no use, for his opponent wouldn’t be so easily sated.
Lukas was thrown against a tree and he crumpled at its base, defeated, and unwilling to rise for another bout with his larger opponent. A dismayed whimper signaled his submission and he reared backwards to show he wished for no more. The red wolf began to rise in front of Lukas, but it wasn’t in anger that the beast arose. It began to change into the man inside, a man that both the wolf and Lukas knew well.
It was the man that brought Lukas kicking and snarling into this life. He changed along with the red wolf and soon father and son stood together in the forest.
“I’m not in need of your constant interference!” Lukas bellowed with hands raised in anger. He waited for his father’s response, but none was given outside an ill-omened stare from the man that raised him.
The red-haired Bernhard Wendish turned from his unclothed son and disappeared into the shadows. It was some time before he returned with a sack in one hand and an axe in the other.
“If you want to fight someone, you can fight me,” his father said. “Not one of those undead abominations.”
He raised the axe above his head in a threatening fashion and powered it deep into the tree next to Lukas.
Night Kings: The Complete Anthology Page 5