That man was her father, Victor Dukane, a man that saw her through the good times and the bad. Those days were long gone, now replaced by a noncommittal disdain that seemed to change little with each passing day. She couldn’t blame her father. He wanted to see her safe from the dangers that loomed over the city of Salem. Little did he know that was the reason she was being driven astray.
It took several minutes before Elsa could regain her composure. Still it throbbed, but it subsided to manageable proportions and she found the strength necessary to unclasp her hands from around her head. It was at that moment she realized that no longer was she alone in these woods.
Elsa had found her wayward friend, or rather, Lukas had found her. Only it wasn’t the Lukas she hoped to find. It was the monster beneath Elsa dealt with now. She had come all this way for this opportunity. She wouldn’t walk away now that Lukas’ true self was revealed to her. The problem was that neither would the rabid werewolf across from her.
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.
He was one of the mayor’s closest friends. He had been for over two decades. It wasn’t likeness of character that drove them together. It was self preservation. Unlike the vampires with their limitless coffers, werewolves were relegated to the dregs of society due to their moonlight affliction. Only Bernhard Wendish never received that message and kept those that would be his enemies close at hand.
The alliance of Dukane and Wendish saw both families prosper over the years. One only needed to look up in the sky while they walked the streets of downtown. It saw Bernhard to unparalleled heights for werewolves all over the world. That brought powerful enemies, but none ever stayed for long. Not while Victor, Bernhard, and their unseen associate controlled the streets.
A stir in the lobby outside brought Bernhard to his heels. He jumped to his feet and moved to respond, but before he could get anywhere near the door, it burst open and stopped him in mid stride.
Bernhard was caught by the slender figure and piercing blue eyes of Cetra Altaras. She looked him up and down with her head tilted sideways in disbelief, and said, “Continue.”
“Whatever do you mean?” he asked, honestly enough with his hands raised in submission.
“Cut the act,” Cetra said with her eyes on the cabinet Bernhard had just spent a half hour rifling through. “I come for the same reasons you do.”
She moved to turn on the light, but the firm hands of Bernhard reached out to bring a halt to her movement.
“You mustn’t,” he said with baited breath. “The lights could give our plans away.”
Cetra brushed off Bernhard’s words of warning, but at the las
t moment she decided it wasn’t worth the trouble and refrained from turning the light on. She was less than pleased with the decision and yet she couldn’t fault the fiery Slav for his caution. One gaffe and they would lose more than their positions alongside the mayor.
“We weren’t all born with canine vision,” said Cetra, lip curled in distaste. She raised her hand around waist high and faced her palm towards the ceiling. A small azure light came to life in the palm of her hand and illuminated everything within a meter radius, and not a thing more.
Less than daunted with the displays of his peer, Bernhard returned to the file cabinet and continued his search for the missing files in the bottom drawer. Cetra let him fumble in the likeliest of places while she sidled over to the massive oaken desk of mayor Dukane.
Cetra dumped herself in his leather clad chair. She made no move to aid in Bernhard’s search, at least that’s how it appeared to the werewolf across the room. She cared little for what the pack master thought of her. Cared little what anyone in Salem thought of her. But the secret of her doings couldn’t be revealed to the outside world, lest she wanted a return of the fire that consumed her precursors.
It was through the mystical hands of Cetra that the secret coalition of Dukane and Wendish built their legacy. They rose in power and prominence while she languished in the impoverished parts of Salem. It wasn’t a decision taken lightly, nor was it one made strictly of her own accord. There were others within her collective, others that preferred to be felt rather than seen. With the blessing of those others Cetra Altaras entered into the union of werewolf and man. To this day she remained by their side. Yet, it could all change in a heartbeat if they were to be discovered by the common man.
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