“Who are you?” an irate Hans Brackhaus asked.
He stabbed Elsa again. She was frozen without recourse available to her, but still she fought his pull while the taste of her own blood crept up her throat. Hotter and hotter her eyes burned as the pain and the strain became too much to maintain.
“Who are you?” he repeated to a thunderous roar.
“You’ve known me many years, councilor,” said an empowered Elsa Dukane as she broke her mental locks with ease, “and I think somewhere deep down you always knew the answer to that question. I’m the bitch that’s going to put you six feet under Salem.”
Elsa Dukane had proven to be a most worthwhile adversary for Hans Brackhaus, but she battled with a king on this night and a king always comes prepared. The moment she uttered what would be her last words, Hans plunged his black sword into the heart of the unknown girl.
Streams of white burst from her chest until the light could no longer be withstood by the warlock king and the battle on 1st Street came to an abrupt end as the witches and warlocks surrendered to radiant light. There was only one that braved the white fires of Elsa’s other. That man was Lukas Wendish and he would see himself burnt to a crisp before he gave up on his friend in need. No matter his intentions, it would seem that time wasn’t on the young wolf’s side. He wouldn’t make it to her in time.
When the lights dispersed a glowing white tiger emerged through the warlock king and devoured him in a mess of opaque strands of light. He writhed in torment with his fists raised to Valhalla above as the light tore at his very essence. He was a king, meant for the finest things in life, and yet here he was condemned to death on the eve of his glorious triumph.
Even as death took Hans Brackhaus, his war cry remained in the air as his iridescent soul bled off into the night; and as the glistening white tiger faded from his world, Elsa Dukane took its place, on her hands and knees, eyes alive with the awakened power of her other.
Chapter Fifty Eight
Night Kings: Old World Cull
Gregory Blackman
When the World Ends
The city of Salem was torn asunder on the night of the full moon. That moon now waned in the sky above, but the damage it wrought would linger long afterwards. With the death of their lieutenant, their commander, and now their warlock king, the brothers had been left broken, but still of this world.
The horde scuttled against now overwhelming odds and fled into the fires they brought to Salem. Some would survive long enough to reach the city limits; others would know death’s embrace near as soon as they fled into the backstreets, but all of the brothers would experience their own personal hell before they fled what remained of Salem. Remus Castalon would make sure of it.
All the witches stood in silence as Elsa Dukane emerged from the mammoth sized beast. There was only one that gathered the strength to put thought into action and that was the warrior of light, herself, and she sprinted through the vacant lot with eyes locked on another.
“Father, I’m here for you!” Elsa cried as she collapsed to the ground and took his frail husk into her arms. “You’ve got to talk to me. Goddamn it!”
Victor Dukane was near death, but still he drew breath. He couldn’t move. He could barely speak, but the words he whispered into the ear of his daughter would forever change her world.
“I-I never wanted this for you,” the fallen mayor stammered as blood touched his lips. “I only wanted to protect you from the darkness that took your mother. I failed… and for that the city burned… I’m as guilty as the authorities will no doubt conclude me to be.”
His lower lip quivered incessantly, but Victor pushed past the failings of his human body and continued with what needed to be said. “While you are the result of love, the love for both your mother and the humanity that bore you both, you were considered impossible among my kind, a joyous, impossible burst of sunshine in the world, without a hint of the ancient heritage of your dubious father. My failure to notice your gifts was my first failure as a father, but it wouldn’t be my last—.”
Victor began to choke on the flecks of blood that refused to crawl up his throat. Elsa tried to put his mind at ease, keep him from finding his tongue, but Victor persisted to battle his daughter and fought to appease his inner demons.
“You’re human side comes from your mother,” he said, “but your other half, the one locked inside, comes from your father. You’re people, the asura, have long wandered the cosmos in search of a home to replace the one we lost. Earth was that planet, a world both wondrous and horrid at the same time, with enough resources and land to see all its peoples well nourished. That’s what we believed at the time… but those were many years ago. What we learned in all that time is that we knew nothing at all about this planet.”
“You must go to the Old World,” Victor continued through the fires that climbed up his throat. “Only there will you be able to merge your two halves…”
“You’re not making any sense. How will I know what to look for?”
“Your inner self will now,” her father answered, “and if she should falter along that path… those that remain of our kind will no doubt track you down; for you know, my dearest daughter, it’s not every millennium one of ours is welcomed into the universe.”
His answers only served to add more questions to fuel Elsa’s desire for the truth. What would be found in the Old World? What would happen if she didn’t merge halves? Those questions would neither be asked nor answered as her father began to glow with a peculiar red aura.
His light was almost out, but after three millennia on this world Victor Dukane finally knew the peace he sought. He could thank his daughter for that. In return, she would know a world of hardship and darkness, but where he faltered along the way he knew his daughter would be resilient.
Victor Dukane died that night in his daughter’s arms. She cried a river of molten tears for her father, but they did little to keep his corporeal body on this world. He burst into the iridescent light their kind was known for, and while everyone else was forced to look away, Elsa saw the true self of her father—her true self—and it provided comfort in a time it was most needed.
She spent too many years at war with a man that loved her unconditionally. He was never a saint. He never pretended to be one, but he was there for her in the end, even at the cost of his own life. The time to forgive was over. Now it was time to understand.
“Don’t weep for me, child,” said her father, composed of dozens of white tendrils wrapped in a spherical mass of white aura. “No one every truly dies. We simply changes from one form to the next. That’s where both your mother and I will be… waiting on the other side.”
Elsa took solace in the thought of her parents reunited and watched as her father soared high into the early morning sky. There were a myriad of emotions that stirred within the far reaches of her head. She needed to release those thoughts and find comfort in familiar arms—arms that knew loss and darkness in great measure.
“Lukas?” she asked out loud as the crowd of witches gathered around. “Where are you?”
“We haven’t seen him, child,” said Aubrey Wendish as she placed a blanket over Elsa’s shoulders. “He must have joined the vampire in the hunt.”
That wasn’t good enough for Elsa and she struggled to lift off the ground, but it wasn’t until the silver-haired pack mother lent her aid that the job was seen to completion. She was joined by Leanne Ramsey, and while they were draped in ragged cloaks, one didn’t need perfect vision to see the many wounds inflicted on them. Aubrey Wendish stumbled around on what could barely be called a foot and still she helped the unknown girl to her feet.
Elsa expended a tremendous amount of energy tonight. Energy she wasn’t aware she had, but she would see it all gone if it meant the return of Lukas. She’d been a coward her whole life. She suppressed her feelings, told herself it wasn’t real, all in the fear that Lukas would reject her heart. If she didn’t get the truth out now she might neve
r again summon the courage to tell him how she truly felt.
“He’ll turn up,” Leanne said softly, “There’s no way he’d miss a cause for celebration. Not after he’s lost so much.”
Aubrey took Elsa by hand and led her to the side of the road. Elsa tried to fight her and continue the search for Lukas, but she was weak and the hand of another seemed to ease the soul.
“Why are you talking care of me?”
“Because you’re one of us,” the mother of the pack said, “and you have been from the start.”
Elsa looked behind her shoulder to the empty lot where she battled the warlock king. In that fleeted glance she saw the company sign of Collard Industries. That’s what her other noticed before the fires started to spread down 1st Street. Somehow the tallest, most prolific building in the city had vanished in the dead of night and not one person paid it any attention.
What secrets did its concrete walls hold? What secrets could prove so powerful, as to unbind a building from its stone foundations? Those questions wouldn’t be for her to uncover. She had enough of those to deal with as it was already.
Elsa wasn’t the only woman on 1st Street who’d been through hell and back on this night. Her best friend, Gemma Kohl, visited Remus Castalon’s black kingdom, but unlike any other before, Gemma lived to tell her tale.
It was a dire place where Gemma couldn’t see her hands extended in front of her. That was nothing to the sounds that echoed from one ear to the other. Gemma could hear the tormented souls of the vampire king’s fallen. They cried out for justice, and for peace, but those desperate voices would know neither.
A familiar chill ran down the spine of the young witch as the man in black moved to her side. Gemma could feel the vampire king leer at her with his cold, dead eyes. Whatever he wanted she didn’t rightly give a damn.
“Don’t even think about it,” Gemma said.
“One day we’ll call ourselves allies,” said Remus, letting out a mirthful bellow all the while, “but that day isn’t upon us yet. My people have much to atone for and it will take time, money, and blood to teach them another way. It’s not Salem we have to learn to share, Sister of Salem. It’s the entire world, and in that my kindred aren’t alone.”
“We will try,” Gemma said in agreement.
Remus Castalon had come a long way from his Sicilian roots. He’d traveled the world, seen every sight imaginable, and some of them beyond even supernatural belief, but every time he tried to become a better man he would find that he only served to become a lesser monster. If there was a healthy balance in this world he’d not found it. No vampire had.
Could Remus become that vampire while the greatest threat to kindred survival lived within the same city as him? Lukas Wendish grew leaps and bounds over these last few weeks. Could the young werewolf one day usurp him as the truest monster in town? In the city of Salem everything was a possibility. The vampire king couldn’t have that.
“Some habits prove hard to break,” Remus said to the sister beside him. His voice trailed off as the two of them looked out to survey the carnage brought to their hometown. The fires had taken much of Salem, but there still stood a glimmer of hope in what remained. In that they drew a great deal of comfort. “You fought well tonight, little witch.”
“You’re not surprised?”
Remus cocked his head sideways, looked down upon the young sister beside him, and asked, “Should I be?”
Gemma Kohl didn’t have an answer for him. She wasn’t going to play his game. Not while the few sisters left alive needed her. She looked down the street to the mountains in the west. They could only be seen for brief flashes before the smokestacks of a burning city wash them back out of view, but it was a sight that needed to be seen.
“Our last holy site is buried under that mountain,” muttered Gemma, pensively and with remorseful undertones. “Out of all my sisters, I alone got to see its inner sanctum. If only for those few minutes El and I had. That honor should’ve gone to someone of more importance than me. Whatever hold it had over Salem, good or evil, that hold rests over the city no more. Our pillar remains connected to the goddess’ realm. At least, in that we can be thankful.”
The sight a hooded Cetra Altaras in an alleyway nearby caught Gemma’s attention and, just like that, her conversation with the man in black came to an end.
“It appears the high priestess thinks you’re fraternizing with the undead,” said the vampire king to some delight. “We wouldn’t want that, now would we?”
Before Gemma Kohl could spurn the advances of Remus Castalon, he dismissed himself with a stiff bow that saw him descend into the shadows that marked the concrete floor. She knew why the high priestess wanted her to go. That didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
There would be no celebration in the streets of Salem, probably not for many years after, but it appeared too much to ask for the young witch to share in a victory with her friends after she’d seen more than a lifetimes worth of bloodshed.
“Come,” said Cetra Altaras as she guided the sisters that still lived into the alley. “We must be gone from these streets before the humans return to find us here.”
It wasn’t the humans Cetra Altaras feared. Not this time. It was the sisters themselves that proved the true threat. They were the enemy within. There was work to do and it would begin while the fires still gripped their city. Too long the witches relied on outside sources for information. No longer would the Sisters of Salem be led astray. They needed to burn in the fires that took so many of their kind. They needed to disappear like in the times of old, slip into the shadows were they could never be seen, never be heard, but where they could always be felt.
Gemma shuffled off to the back alley where he other sisters moved to flee the streets they fought to protect. She didn’t want to leave Elsa, the werewolves, or even the nefarious man in black, but now wasn’t the time to question her high priestess’ wishes. There was much to do and Gemma Kohl would be there to lay the foundation of what was to come.
Suddenly, Gemma was pulled aside by an unknown hand. She tried to speak, but her lips were forced shut from a witch’s incantation. She knew this because it was the first one her mother ever taught her.
“My dear child,” said Marianne Kohl, “I came back for you. I said I would come back for you. I did. I came back for you.”
Once Marianna was a mirror image of the daughter she bore. Those were many years ago and Gemma looked upon a mother ravished both of the mind and of the body. She was incoherent, milky eyed, and trembling incessantly. She had all the marks of the seer, powerful witches with the precognitive abilities that became ravaged over time by the visions they saw.
Marianne was known to leave for days at a time during Gemma’s misbegotten youth. She wouldn’t say where she went or how she got there. She would simply vanish off the face of the earth. Gemma didn’t know where her mother vanished on this occasion. She didn’t want to know, but she feared that option wasn’t available to her this time.
“The goddess speaks through me,” Marianne said with a shaky hand that ran down her daughter’s black hair, “and she calls for you, dearest daughter. She was here. Yes she was; but not here anymore. She left before the fires came, feared her secrets would get out, but she’ll be back soon enough. Yes she will.”
When Cetra came back locate her youngest sister she found the streets empty, save for the fires that rages, the unknown girl, and her new werewolf brethren. Marianne was gone from this world, her daughter along with her for the ride. It was time for her to disappear, as well.
With the witches gone from the streets, the vampires dead to rights, and all but two werewolves left of a once prominent pack, Elsa Dukane was as lost to the world as all those that stayed to fight for their home. The pains of the night would’ve been more manageable to the three left behind if the only one left that truly mattered came back to them.
Their calls to Lukas Wendish would go unanswered on this night and all other nights, for
the prodigal son, friend, and would be lover wouldn’t be there when the flames died down.
Lukas watched from a distance as the ones he loved most of all quietly departed the streets of Salem. He wanted more than anything on this world to go to them in their hour of need, but if the dark princess still lived that’s what she would count on him to do. He couldn’t do that to them. There had been too much blood spilled already. So, he slipped away into the darkness until he couldn’t look upon the faces he was forced to leave behind.
On this night, those that the humans called monsters sacrificed everything to save them, their city, and come morning all the supernatural races were decimated for their efforts; some beyond repair or reconciliation. It wasn’t that the monsters weren’t prepared or lacked the strength and conviction needed to save their homes. It was that none of them trusted the other enough to act cohesively. The city of Salem suffered for those failures. None more than the monsters that stood their ground.
The humans would never know of the Brotherhood of the Crescent Moon or why they came for Salem. They wouldn’t know of the monsters or their sacrifices. They would go on, in blissful ignorance of how close they came to complete annihilation, forever in the shadows of the monsters that saved them. If the humans ever saw those that saved their city from devastation, they would no doubt call them bringers of death and darkness.
The monsters of Salem wouldn’t have it any other way.
The End
The Story Continues in Moon Gods
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