Night Kings: The Complete Anthology

by Gregory Blackman

  It worked as intended. Holger stormed from one side of the street to the other and closed on the man that took his mentor’s life. He took several arched swipes at the vampire king, but much to the brawny Nord’s surprise, all his attacks missed by a wide birth.

  “You certainly fight like a human,” Remus said with a distasteful snicker. “Are you sure it was your brother that lacked the gifts of your kind?”

  Remus overheard the conversation the hulking warlock had with Victor Dukane. While he didn’t know of Holger or Julian before this night, the vampire king wasn’t opposed to using the information to his otherworldly advantage. It was his second favorite weapon, after all.

  “You monster!” a livid Holger bellowed as he came once more at the man in black. “Tell me what you know!”

  “I drained the fool,” he lied, in hopes of further antagonizing the warlock. “Then I snacked on his organs and devoured his bones whole. I saved his brain for last… I like to do that, you know.”

  Enraged by his failings as a warrior and brother, Holger lunged forward to see the man in black cleaved in two. His overextension was a calculated risk, but not for the one that meant to take it.

  Remus used the warlock’s slow recovery time to his benefit and caught Holger flatfooted, without any means to soften the blow. But it wasn’t with his hands that Remus struck at his foe.

  A wide-eyed Holger stood lurched over as the vampire king passed him by. His hands trembled so badly that he found the claymore too weighed and it clashed to the ground. That ringing remained with him as he looked down to see a small tread of black had punctured his gut.

  Before the mighty Holger could as much as winch in agony several more of those black threads found the inside of his stomach. He raised his head to see hundreds more stands of black headed his way. They came from the chain link fences in the back alley across from him, but these were more than wires that came for him tonight.

  It was the infamous shroud of Remus Castalon. This was the true strength of the vampire king and now their mightiest warrior had come to learn of his ways. He watched in satisfaction as Holger’s body was riddled with more black threads than even his enlarged frame could handle. The warlock exploded into a mess of blood and excrement that left the man in black with no one else to challenge his authority.

  The fires of battle still raged on the streets of Salem. The werewolves were succinct in their strikes, moving from one target to the next before their enemies could hit them with their elemental attacks. A sudden howl broke out amongst the werewolves that saw their advance halted.

  Remus sunk back to the shadows to avoid whatever these warlocks had done, but it turned out they did nothing at all. There was something wrong with the werewolves themselves, not the men they feasted upon. It was almost as if their link to each other broke somewhere along the line. The werewolves, lost once more to their bloodlust, began to fight over the scraps of their kills. This made them open targets for the warlocks, and targeted they were by the horde that stood before them.

  The werewolves were swallowed up by the warlocks massed against them. They tried their best to flee the scene, but wherever they went, the flames were certain to follow. In the end, only two managed to avoid the fires and scamper away into the smoky haze, but their wounds were plenty. They wouldn’t be back for more.

  The man in black was in trouble. He dispatched of the last straggler in his path and sunk into the shadows to avoid further confrontation. On any other night the death of a pack would’ve lifted Remus’ spirits to the cloudy skies high above. Not this night.

  The werewolves of Salem had taken much from the city over the years, but in the end, they repaid every bit taken with that of their own blood. No one could’ve asked more from them. Not even Bernard Wendish.

  So why couldn’t the vampire king? His kindred abandoned him. They wanted the executioner. What they got was a poor man’s substitute. He didn’t blame them. He blamed his maker and her influence on the vampire kingdom from its dark roots. She pitted her children against the werewolves, the Christians, and even the reapers. She did all of it to attain her dark desires of vampiric reign. Not just her kingdom, but all the lands of man.

  It was no wonder the world hated them, Remus thought, as he lay perched between the blurred lines between darkness and light. Vampires were every bit the monsters they were portrayed as; vile, ruthless, and willing to cut down a child to save their own skin. Tonight the werewolves had done their supernatural, civic duty. When would his kindred do theirs?

  It was hard to see through the stacks of smoke, but Remus picked up on a sudden change in pressure. There was something brewing in the sky above. A crack of thunder broke out through the streets, and then another, until one couldn’t help but notice the swirled clouds of black at circled atop all those crowded on 1st Street.

  “By the nine circles!” cursed Remus, his head stuck in the clouds. “How much worse can this night get?”

  Chapter Fifty Seven

  Night Kings: Old World Cull

  Gregory Blackman

  Who’s the Bitch?

  Lukas Wendish had come from fields farther than the outskirts of Salem. He came through caged doors, rival pack members, and a sadistic princess with thoughts of turning him into her next adoring follower. Through these hardships he emerged both a different man and a different wolf, and while Lukas wasn’t entirely sure what he would become, there wasn’t time to figure those changes out. Not while his friends and family risked their lives against the flames.

  Those were friends and family nowhere to be seen. Lukas stood the very ends of 1st Street as a black horde of robed warriors stood massed at the other end; but it was what emerged between them that caught the eyes of all.

  Clouds of black fingers raked across the skies were they culminated together in a black mass high above the street the warlocks presided. It was the makings of an unnatural born disaster, one that saw onyx clouds claw their way from the sky and descent to the cement confines the supernatural races found themselves.

  “What the hell did I walk into?”

  It took some time for Lukas to gaze back down to the world, but when he did, there was something new for him to locate. A wiry grin could be seen in the shadow of an alleyway not far from the ethereal clouds. It was Remus Castalon and he sought the attention of the one that stood alone.

  Lukas sprang into action and raced down the empty street without a thought towards his own safety. That began to change when bolts of lightning were fired, not from the sky, but the black army before him. Lukas soon discovered that his newfound speed and agility allowed him survive what appeared an insurmountable firestorm, but it wasn’t long before his attention was snapped and the attacks started to come too close for comfort. He was forced to duck into an alley and wait for the cracks of lightning to cease. That’s where he came to know the true horrors of war.

  He hardly noticed his mother past her scorched hide, but a few silver patches remained to give her outer wolf away. He ran to her, but as he came to her side he saw there wasn’t anything to be done. She would heal, be the true pains would remain.

  Beside his mother was a hunched Leanne Ramsey who tore at Aubrey’s hide to see a new coat heal overtop. That wouldn’t be anytime soon and if those men marched down the street they would be certain to find them here. A single tear lay trapped in the eye of Lukas, but he wiped it away and saw that hand clenched into the clawed fist of the first newborn werewolf.

  “You’re battles are over,” said Lukas, the ground trembling beneath his weight. “I’ll see that neither of you come to witness anymore senseless bloodshed, tonight and every one afterwards. This ends here.”

  His mother tried to lift herself to aid in his coming battle, but a wave of her son’s hand saw that notion come to a close. This was the pack master’s fight. With eyes that pained to linger on the sight of his mother and friend, Lukas turned towards the street at the end of the alleyway. He emerged from the back alley to find the warlocks
hadn’t moved an inch since his departure; but it wasn’t him that kept them at bay. It was the clouds of black and bursts of thunder and lightning, its slow descent upon the streets coming closer and closer to its inevitable arrival.

  Those things didn’t matter to the pack master. He bore down on the dark robed men and he did so with the knowledge that he had the essence of what remained of his pack beside him. Fifty had become three over the course of four weeks. He would see that number drop to two, willingly, if it meant those two could live free from the persecution that these men, and others like them, would bring upon their kind.

  The clouds of black paled in comparison to those that swirled in the mind of Lukas Wendish. He forgot about his undead ally and continued forward until he was almost underneath the strokes of lightning centered on the streets.

  That’s when the darkness peeled from around the next intersection. Like the large black had of the grim reaper, the wraithlike mass struck Lukas full bore and pushed him back to the dark alleyway he consciously avoided earlier.

  “Not yet,” Remus hissed.

  Lukas stared down the man in black until the shroud was relinquished from his frame. “You don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” said Remus, as if struck with a newfound sense of enlightenment. “You’re a big boy now.”

  “Screw you,” Lukas said in the guttural voice of his new wolf. “You don’t command me, vampire king. Neither does your sister.”

  Remus heard the raspy call of the werewolf in his voice. He saw the man that stood in the monsters place. It’s what the vampire king smelled that bothered him the most. Lukas Wendish wasn’t an unnaturally gifted werewolf. He was another breed entirely. And what he smelled was both promising and lethal.

  He made sure to keep that ostentatious grin stuck on his shadowed face in the hopes it would veil his inner demons. Half of the vampire king wanted to welcome this new breed of wolf with open arms and see their centuries of hate abolished. The other half of Remus Castalon wanted to choke the newborn wolf out and devour him whole, before he gleaned the true potential of his budding powers.

  “I don’t need the daddy issues, kid,” said Remus, halfway between incensing him further and trying to defuse the situation. “I need a soldier; one that listens to fucking orders and doesn’t run off with some halfcocked plan. You got that?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Don’t you want to help your esteemed mayor?” asked Remus, his dead eyes narrowed with interest. “Don’t you want to be the unknown girl’s hero in shaggy armor?”

  Lukas thought it was another one of the man in black’s mistruths, but when Lukas followed the vampire’s pallid finger to a lump of white up the street, the young werewolf knew what his eyes landed on.

  It was Victor Dukane, crumpled up on the pavement where he lay weightless in his own blood. This was a man Lukas looked up to in admiration, before the dark truths of their environment settled, only to see his fall from grace. He was alone in this world, not an ally willing to pull him from the fire.

  Lukas tried to be that better man and he rushed out from the back alley, but again Remus was there to hold him back.

  “What did I say about going off halfcocked?” the vampire king whispered into his ear. “You won’t make it and you’ll seal my fate along with you.”

  Lukas struggled to fight back, and while the young werewolf gained the freedom he desired, but found it came at considerable cost. It felt like slight pinpricks across all of his unclothed body, pins that delved further and further until he couldn’t move a muscle.

  “They’re going to kill him,” Lukas growled through lips now strewn shut by threads of shroud. “We have to do something…”

  “We will,” assured Remus, and with the wave of his hand, he saw all the thin strands of shroud recoil from the frame of Lukas Wendish. “But it will be done only when the time is right. Not a moment before. You hear me, boy?”

  Remus watched in astonishment as the hundreds of deep tissue wounds Lukas endured healed before his eyes. Unfortunately for the vampire king, the loss of the werewolf’s many lesions would see Lukas emboldened.

  He’d been kicked once too many times tonight. He knew what the man in black was trying to do and he’d have none of it. The wars for dominance in Salem were over. That’s what his father had been trying to instill in him from the beginning. That’s the way he’d carried the pack forward. If the vampires wanted to follow suit then the vampire king would have to do it of his own accord.

  Lukas thrust his claws deep into the chest of Remus, looked him straight in his undead eyes, and said, “Listen here, vampire. You don’t own me. You don’t own Salem. You can live here and throw as many parties as you want at your mansion, but bare your teeth to one more werewolf and I’m liable to come back and finish the job.”

  “Is that so?” Remus’ laughter echoed throughout the alleyway, but as the otherworldly fingers of black shroud closed around the wrists of his opponent, that laughter began to take on a fervent temperament.

  Remus enjoyed this show of force, reviled in its madness, and when Lukas tried to sink in deeper he found his hands did the opposite. Stronger than either the vampire or the werewolf was the unnatural blackness that few in this world understood, fewer controlled.

  Lukas resisted the pull as long as he could before he finally gave up in frustration. He pulled back sharply, and with that action, saw the shroud dissipate from his wrists. Before either could think to continue their skirmish between rounds, the swirled mass of black above them decided the time was right to act.

  The cracks of thunders came this time from the dark skies above, one after the other, until the silence between bangs was muddled somewhere in between the explosions of sound and natural might. For each one of those cracks from above there was a bolt of lightning that centered on the city street nearby. They dropped from the sky with such ferocity and force that the ground below became marked by a large circle.

  Then the last bolt fell and everything went white for those massed along 1st Street. Both Lukas and Remus had rushed to the alley entrance to gaze upon the supernatural force, but neither could bear the brunt of the impact. Lukas shielded his eyes, but it was a light that proved too intense for the eyes of one best kept from the sun.

  “I don’t believe it,” Lukas said after he’d finally removed his forearm to take stock of his surroundings. “They’re here.”

  “Tell me! What’s happening? I demand to know!”

  Lukas turned to tell Remus the current happenings on the ground, but the vampire king was nowhere to be found in the alleyway. He was left alone. That suited Lukas fine.

  “There goes my undead ball and chain,” said Lukas, with the last smile his face would see for some time. He put those thoughts out of his head and rushed into the street where the concentrated sphere of lightning bore down into the pavement.

  Another bright flash hit Lukas that caused him to stumble backwards to the ground. The whirled mass of black clouds began to shrink back into the sky above and soon it’d left this world as quickly as it appeared. When he gaze drifted downward, Lukas found that many resided within the tower of light and they came to battle.

  It was Cetra Altaras, flanked by Gemma Kohl and Elsa Dukane, and they were surrounded by dozens of hooded sisters armed with only their hands. The Sisters of Salem set to their work immediately and set to stir up the elements in order to exact their fury.

  The Sisters of Salem had known about the existence of their goddess’ other children since before the witch trials. It was one of the few stories that remained in their possession. It spoke of the dark ones in times before that the goddess sought to temper into warriors of divinity. The warlocks betrayed their unknown goddess and set fire to the world around them, armed with gifts that never should’ve been bestowed.

  A great force field was erected atop the mountains and sealed the Sunkeeper Temple off from all that would brave the dangerous paths to its peak. With their home l
ost to them, the warlocks left the New World aboard their wooden armada and sought to find a place where they belonged.

  Time passed for the land and the horrors the natives knew at the hands of the Vikings were forgotten; but soon European settlers would come and the process began anew. War spread and soon it became impossible for the goddess to watch without reaction.

  Her protective measures were dropped and a select few were chosen for what would one day become the Sisters of Salem and the Sisters of Charleston. They were to be guardians of the filthy, the broken, and the poor. Only, the world didn’t accept the sisters of the goddess. Not like the she hoped they would.

  They were called witches and harpies, ostracized for their differences, cursed, and spat upon. They were prosecuted for those gifts, set on fire, held under water, and forced to abandon all notions of friend of family. The New World wasn’t for them. In the end that was the message and the sisters received it loud and clear.

  Those days were upon them once more and the sisters could no longer stand back and watch it all unfold in the shadows. The witches, above all others, should’ve known the truth behind the darkness, but they became blinded by their seclusion. They barely knew of the world around them and relied too much on spoon-fed information from the other supernatural races. It was time for Cetra Altaras to make a change. While one could still be made.

  With a sizzling crack of thunder, the high priestess’ finger burst into an arching blast of lightning that tore through the middle of the black horde. Her shot signaled her sisters to do the same, and soon, both sides erupted into elemental warfare.

  Lukas dodged a few stray projectiles that came his way, but it seemed the warlocks had forgotten about him. He would make sure that proved to be a costly mistake. In the circle he could see a stone-faced Elsa Dukane. She wasn’t the least interested in defense and stood there motionless while fire rained down on them.