The Night's Champion Collection: A supernatural werewolf thriller trilogy

by Richard Parry

  After he finished his breakfast, he watched the people stream by. It didn’t seem to matter what time of the day or night, there were always so many people here in this New York City of theirs. So many noises, so many things going on. So much of it without hope, or purpose, just churning and churning over and over.

  We must know where to begin.

  Maksimillian shook his head, hit the side of his head with a hand, shook his head again. “What would you know?”

  Silence. Of course. Never anything useful, never anything helpful, just words, voices in his head, voices that told him to kill, to kill his own Pack. He hated that voice.

  We are the same.

  They weren’t. Not the same, not at all. He was Maksimillian Kotlyarov, known as Maks to a woman with green hair, and he had hope. He didn’t need this voice, he just needed her, to start a new Pack—

  We are the same.

  —a new Pack that would fix everything. Maksimillian didn’t know what she would do, but he knew she gave him hope, and maybe that was enough. It felt like more than enough, as if his cup was brimming over, as if the world was suddenly lighter than air, all because she knew what he wanted. Like she could really see him.

  He blinked. What was he thinking? He barely knew her. She barely knew him.

  We must know where to begin.

  “Da,” he said. “We must know where to begin. So. We find place. We find where this started.”

  We hunt.

  • • •

  It hadn’t taken long to find, once he’d put his mind to it. He just followed the absence.

  Not of activity. There was plenty of that. Police officers, a cordon made of flimsy tape, photographers. It was those last that caught his eye, this scene of a great fight, the building doors broken, the bullet holes in the walls of brownstones outside, and those photographers standing by, taking no photos.

  The police, doing nothing much more than walking around, ensuring no one came close.

  A great deal of activity, but an absence of action. Like they were all waiting. Like they were hiding.

  He had seen this before. The vampiry owned all, saw all, controlled all. They controlled the police, or a good enough part of them that this area would just disappear. Oh, Maksimillian knew that it would appear on YouTube, that the many people with phones would tell their friends about it, but in a week’s time it would be old news, forgotten, just another small fight in a big city. That was how they won. They hid everything in plain sight, made you think that such horrible things were everyday things, so that you wouldn’t question the next time your neighbors or friends or family were killed by them. Just another shooting or robbery gone wrong or other soft words to hide the terrible truth.

  This time was a little different. Maksimillian could almost taste it in the air. A vampir had fought here, and it had not won.

  They didn’t know what to do.

  Maksimillian felt the smile grow on his face. This, right here, this ordinary bar was where it began. The trail of the woman with green hair started here. All he had to do was to sit, and watch, and wait.

  Perhaps he would get to kill another vampir.

  We hunt.

  The day looked brighter already.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN

  Liselle wasn’t really looking around the bar. It wasn’t a question of interest, although that was waning fast. She’d been here before, and the only thing that had been worth the visit was a man. A man she’d thrown out of her life, because the alternative wasn’t worth thinking about.

  Because we need to. Because no one else is going to. Because we can.

  She felt her lip curl in something that wasn’t really a smile. John Miles, you can’t. And if you try, you’ll die. Everything around me dies, don’t you see? I was made to end this world.

  No. She wasn’t looking around the bar because she didn’t want to be reminded. Not of John Miles, or of her purpose. She didn’t want to see the broken chairs and tables, the blood, the bullet holes in the walls, and be reminded of what Kaylan had said.

  We were made for this.

  A movement drew her attention to the door, or the space where the door would have been if it hadn’t been splintered and broken. Police were moving back and forth outside, doing nothing much of anything at all. Kaylan owned them, or her vampires did. It didn’t matter which it was, as Kaylan owned the vampires; what was theirs was hers. It wasn’t the officers that had drawn her to look, it was someone else.

  Josef.

  Josef was ducking under the police tape, his arms bare in the late morning sun. He walked into the place like he owned it — he may well have — and stood at the bar, a few feet away from her. Consciously or not, they were in similar positions as just two nights ago when she’d met John Miles here, when he’d poured her a drink that reminded her of better times, and smiled at her.

  The bottle of Midas Touch was still on the bar in front of her, empty now. It would be cleaned away by the police or time or both, but she could still remember the beautiful man who’d put it there.

  Josef cleared his throat. “You argue with our sister last night?”

  Liselle sighed, reached into her clutch and pulled out a cigarette. She regarded Josef over a long tongue of flame as she lit it, breathing deep before she blew smoke at the ceiling. “You know Kaylan.”

  “I know Kaylan,” he said, nodding. He leaned over the bar, grabbing something — a bottle of Johnnie Walker. He picked a glass off the bar top, considered the inside of it with a squint, and then poured some of the golden liquid into it. A sip, a wince, and then he put the glass down. “She still want to end the world?”

  “Someone’s killing her vampires,” said Liselle.

  Josef considered that for a moment. “It’s not me. I gave up on that years ago.”

  “As did I. There’s too many of them, and they spread like a disease.” Liselle snorted. “Of course they do. Maynor had a hand in making them. The first of us, the weakest, but she still needed him for … the recipe.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” said Josef. “There’s a certain something about really, you know, punching them until they … stop.” He air boxed with a closed fist for emphasis, a few jabs at an imaginary opponent. “She’s breaking the rules. You’re breaking the rules. Maynor’s breaking the rules. I’d never have thought it was me, me,” and here he slapped his chest for emphasis, “that was on the straight and narrow.”

  Liselle smiled at him. “Old friend,” she said. “You are straight and true.”

  He snorted. “Don’t start with that shit,” he said. “I’m just a kid, having fun.”

  “You stood by me,” she said.

  “Because you were right. You were right then, and you’re right now. Being right doesn’t fix it though.” Josef frowned. “I should be in Mogadishu. There’s another war brewing there. Needs some attention.”

  “So go,” Liselle said. “You can’t fix what’s here, any more than I can.”

  “Then why are you here?” said Josef.

  Because we need to. Because no one else is going to. Because we can.

  “I…” Liselle thought for a moment. “Because I need to be. Because no one else is going to do anything.”

  Josef arched his back, then pushed the glass around in front of him. “That doesn’t sound like the Liselle I know.”

  She almost smiled. “It doesn’t sound like the Josef I know,” she said, “to not go to the nearest war.”

  “Wars start and finish themselves,” he said. “I’ve been doing this so long, it doesn’t really need a hand on the tiller.”

  “Don’t you get bored of it?” she said, leaning towards him. “Don’t you want it to stop?”

  “Depends on why you do it.” He frowned at his glass, noticed it was empty, and snared the Johnnie Walker to remedy the problem. “Back when this all started, I was on the front lines.”

  “I remember,” she said. “I was there too.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Diff
erent faces, though.”

  “Different faces,” she agreed.

  “I thought the job was to make War. I thought it was all about making them,” and here he jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the world outside, “fight each other. But they do that all the time. I couldn’t stop it if I tried. That’s not the job.” He drained his glass again, poured a refill. “When the last Seal is broken and it all comes tumbling down, I want to talk to the Father. I want to ask him why.”

  Liselle put a hand over Josef’s. “The job,” she said, “is getting to know them while you do it. We see them at their worst. It’s when they’re at their best.”

  “I know,” he said. He was looking across the room into a corner, but his thoughts were somewhere else. “I know.”

  “Josef,” she said. “We need to stop her.”

  “We’ve been trying,” he said, “for thousands of years. She gets stronger and stronger with each person that dies. Because everybody dies, but not everyone starves to death or fights in a war.”

  “That’s not really it, and you know it,” said Liselle.

  “It sure feels like it,” said Josef. “I tried to get in a brawl with her a few years back and I lost almost all my teeth.”

  “She made them wrong,” said Liselle. “I’m sure of it. She’s taken death away from them, the very right to die. But Maynor’s part, I think there’s something there.” She frowned. “Kill the head of the snake, and the tail dies.”

  “Sure,” said Josef, “but all the old ones hide away. How are we going to get them angry enough to come out? Once we get them out, and wipe the floor with them — if we can — how do we stop her doing it again? Just wiping the slate and putting new pieces on the board?”

  Liselle thought for a moment, remembering a man with a beautiful light inside him, but with maddening words, words that had made Kaylan incensed. She remembered a woman with green hair who said STOP and how Kaylan had, for a moment, stopped, right in her apartment.

  And she remembered how she’d thrown them out.

  “Liselle?” Josef was looking at her. “Liselle, do you know how we can do this?”

  “No,” she said, knowing she meant yes.

  “I see,” said Josef. He looked at the bottle of Midas Touch in front of her, and then at the empty space where John Miles had stood two nights ago. “The man that was here. Who is he?”

  “He’s nobody,” said Liselle. “Forget him.”

  “And if he’s nobody,” said Josef, “how do we get access to him?”

  “You can’t have him,” said Liselle. She leaned towards Josef, gripped his arm tight, so tight that he looked at her. That’s right. Hear me. “You can have all the humans on this world except that one. Take them all and burn them to ash, but leave that one for me.”

  Josef nodded, put his hand over hers, and sighed. “Liselle. Liselle, do we need him?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I see,” he said. He sighed again. “What can he do?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  He looked down at his glass, then let her go. He — gently, like the friend he was — shook her hand off. He stood, squinted out into the daylight beyond the door of the bar, then turned back to her. “Then we must find him.”

  • • •

  Liselle looked at the front of the building, a plain warehouse among a hundred other plain warehouses scattered all over New York. This one was more run down than some, less run down than others. There was something about it that drew the eye, if you knew where to look. A black car parked out front, tinted windows dark against the afternoon sun. The hood was up, pieces of metal scattered across a work table next to it, a woman bent over the machine, working on something. A big roller door, secured with heavier chains than you’d need for simple security. A smaller door, ready for humans, but made of steel and thick glass.

  This is the place.

  It wasn’t those tiny aspects that drew her eye. It was the light she imagined was within. John’s light. It would ever draw her. She already missed it, being close to it, and hated herself for that.

  The woman with her head down in the car pulled herself out. She had a baseball cap on, a ponytail out the back, grease smudged on her face. She wiped her hands on a rag, looked at Josef standing next to Liselle, then back to Liselle. “Help you?”

  “Is he here?” Liselle took a step forward, looking at the woman. No obvious sign of hostility, no reaching for a hidden weapon, just a help you? with a cautious tone. “Is John Miles here?”

  “Fuck sake,” said the woman. “Carlisle said, but I never thought … are you pregnant?”

  Liselle frowned. “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cool,” said the woman. “Say. This guy with you.” Eying up Josef, some flicker of recognition crossing her face. Like she knew him, but couldn’t place from where, like he was a supporting actor on her favorite show she’d seen on a forgotten channel years ago. Not that Josef was hard to remember, with his tattoos, his muscle, his attitude. He made a statement, they all did. It was how they were made. “I … who are you?”

  “Major,” said Josef, “you know me better than you know yourself.”

  “I’m retired,” said the woman, stiffening at the term Major. “I retired a long time ago.”

  “That’s a lie, and you know it,” said Josef. “You just changed teams. Still fighting the good fight. Still giving your service.”

  “Who are you?” said the woman.

  Liselle stepped in front of Josef. “I’m Liselle, and this is Josef. We want to speak to John Miles.”

  “It’s nice to want things,” said the woman.

  “You know me,” said Josef. “You just don’t want to remember. Because of what it cost you. No one knows what they mean when they say thank you for your service. No one. I was there when you were first deployed, boots down in a mud hole in Asia. You can’t even remember the name of the village you razed to the foundations but you remember me. I was there when you got your first command. Always an officer, born and bred. You were meant to lead, and here you are, leading from the front in a different war. I was there when your heart left with your son. I helped the men and women around you get you back to the world to see … what was left of him, at the end. I was there with you. Right behind you.”

  The woman took a step back, stopped, stood up a little straighter. “Who did you say you were?”

  “Name’s Josef Hackett,” said Josef, “but you can call me War.”

  • • •

  Liselle found herself in a large room, a converted warehouse of a sort. It wasn’t clear what it used to hold - cars, maybe, or packing crates, or any of the thousand other things humans put into boxes on shelves and forgot about. It wasn’t warm or cold. It was dark, or at least gloomy, and her eyes strayed to one of Kaylan’s children. His eyes glinted at her like mirrors, then softened, his shoulders relaxing. Curious. The Night stands with the living dead. These are strange times. She looked about the room, seeing the Alpha, his strength and certainty. His Mate, nothing borrowed there, all ferocity and power held true by the needs of the Pack. The Knight and Sword.

  Turning, Liselle looked at the rest. An older man, his time left in Father’s Eden growing shorter. Kaylan would be able to tell how long for sure, but Liselle knew that he wasn’t some age-addled octogenarian. This man was used to helping people with his strength, and his strength was more than physical. Another man, counted in middle years by the standards of this time, used to commanding people — she could see it by the tilt of his head, and dismissed him as unimportant. The woman named Carlisle stared back at her, bold as brass, still frightened of the dark, and Liselle felt pity for her. So strong. So tireless. So afraid of what might happen. And there, the woman with the green hair, just now rising from a couch, the cloak of sleep slipping from her, the power and might of the Universe falling into place around her. Adalia, as if such a simple name could contain everything that she was.

&nbs
p; Josef was still outside with the Lost Warrior, the woman who was trying to make up for the death of her son by fixing the world.

  Liselle cleared her throat. “Where is John Miles?”

  “Nah,” said Carlisle.

  “What?”

  “He’s not here,” said Carlisle. “That’s what I meant to say.”

  “Major Pearce said he was in here.” Liselle looked around again, as if he should have sprung fully formed from one of the walls.

  “Major Pearce needs to finish fixing that carburetor,” said Carlisle, “or whatever the hell she’s doing with that truck. Car. Whatever. And since she’s not — right this particular second — in this room, we’ll just say she’s dealing with out-dated intelligence.”

  Adalia’s hand had found its way to Carlisle’s elbow. “It’s okay, Melissa.”

  “You saying that because you know?” Carlisle’s words were careful, gentle almost.

  “No,” said Adalia.

  “Cool,” said Carlisle. “He’s not here. Leave a number, I’ll ask him to call you.” She was staring at Liselle, not moving an inch, not in posture, and not in attitude. Silence. No sound, no voices, it was as if everyone was holding their breath.

  Then, that one beautiful voice, the one she wanted to hear most. John Miles. “What’d I miss?”

  Carlisle’s shoulders sagged, and she rubbed at her face with a hand. “Fuck’s sake, Miles.”

  Liselle turned. Her eyes saw the beautiful light at first. She squinted, saw the man beneath it all, fresh from a shower, toweling his hair dry. She couldn’t help but smile. “John.”

  “Hey, baby,” he said. Then he frowned. “Why does Melissa want to hit me?”

  “I don’t want to hit you,” said Carlisle. “I—”